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A Wave of Online Students Is Clogging Up the Internet
The infrastructure schools rely on wasn’t built for virtual learning
Many schools are beginning classes online this year in an effort to slow the spread of Covid-19, but some are finding that the internet isn’t up for the task. They have reported internet slow-downs, server errors, website crashes, and internet service providers that appear to struggle with the load of hundreds or thousands of students simultaneously showing up, virtually, for class.
The digital infrastructure schools rely upon was not built with online courses in mind, and there are a myriad of potential bottlenecks and problems that can cause these types of failures.
The first is a problem close to home. Though it might seem like you’re connected directly to the internet, it filters through a series of switches and routers on the way there. Think of it like driving on a city street before merging onto a highway, where you can go full speed. One of these “small city streets” joins an entire neighborhood’s users together onto the “highway” of the internet provider’s network. This point goes by many names: a DSLAM for DSL users, CMTS for cable subscribers, or OLT for those with a fiber connection. Generally, this looks like a small cabinet on the street. An ultra-fast connection comes from an ISP’s actual network, to this cabinet, for distribution to customers’ homes and businesses.
These devices are responsible for balancing demand for bandwidth across all subscribers, and connecting them to the internet. A DSLAM might have a fast connection, but that could be portioned out across hundreds of customers — and almost all of them are oversubscribed beyond the full speeds promised to customers. In normal times, this isn’t really a problem; people don’t generally consume a ton of bandwidth constantly. But in 2020, everyone is online all day, on video calls, downloading files, or just browsing.
