Comments on: Proof a T-1 line is insufficient

By: links for 2008-10-05 « NV Tek Lib

links for 2008-10-05 « NV Tek Lib — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:01:08 +0000

[...] Proof a T-1 line is insufficient » Moving at the Speed of Creativity (tags: bandwidth) [...]

By: Ready to roll with Tandberg videoconferencing! » Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:20:04 +0000

[...] this means we should be “ready to roll” with videoconferencing here at the OHA. Once we bring fiber to our building and network in the coming months and increase our available bandwidth to 5 MB our connectivity will be even [...]

By: Wesley Fryer

Wesley Fryer — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:54:17 +0000

Yes, and that was even true when I was working for a fortune 9 telecommunications firm. We didn’t have IP videoconferencing at our home office, so I would go home with my portable Polycom and Tandberg videoconferencing units to do H.323 videoconferences to schools for presentations and workshops. All of this has moved pretty quickly and many businesses as well as schools are still scrambling to keep up. My perception is that less than half of the districts in Oklahoma are still on single T-1 lines, most districts have at least stepped up to a 3 MB pipe. When you compare an entire district sharing just a fraction of what a home user on the fastest cable modem plan can enjoy for bandwidth, it really seems weird. I don’t know if we’ll see this situation change in the short term from the standpoint of speeds and costs equalizing between business and residential bandwidth costs. I do think the availability of wireless data cards is a big change– prior to a recent podcast interview Carol Ann McGuire talked about how she uses her cell data card to videoconference and IM at school for the Rock Our World project. High speed cell networks are still limited to urban areas, however, and those monthly costs are still prohibitively high for many.

I remember going down in 1996 to our “Advanced Technology Center” in Lubbock, Texas, to use their network connections and my Zip100 portable disk drive to download video clips from NASA that I could use with my 4th graders. At that time I was the only teacher in our elementary school with a phone line and modem connection to the Internet. (An amazing 33 baud modem as I recall!) That was before we got a T-1 line at school, but of course we didn’t have a full T-1 of commodity Internet connectivity for our school, we shared the bandwidth with the rest of the district. It is really weird now to have faster connectivity at home than at school or work.

By: John Pederson

John Pederson — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:24:59 +0000

Understanding this and being able to explain it to educators is a huge portion of my new role. What seems like a pretty straight forward thing is a fascinatingly complex mixture of education, technology, politics, business, and economics.

You nail it pretty well here in your post. Not long ago we all used to use our “work” networks to get stuff done. It’s flipped pretty quickly. I hear many stories like yours where teachers wait until they are on their “home” network in order to a) get the speed they need and b) get past the filters to the resources they need. It’s amazing.