wasting bandwidth since 1999
So, the hotel advertises free wireless in all rooms.
What they don’t tell you is that the quality of the signal varies drastically depending on where you are in the room.
The worst is sitting at the desk, which, of course, is where they might expect most people to be using a computer.
The best signal is sitting on the floor next to the door. And even there the connection can hardly be called “broadband”
But it is free.
In which states would you have to live in order to get the fastest connections to the internet?
According to a State of the Internet report recently published by Akamai, that would be Delaware, Rhode Island, New York, Nevada, and Oklahoma.
Oklahoma? Must be because Wes lives there. :-)
And what about here in Virginia, the state that claims on it’s license plates to be the “Internet C@pital” (yes, including the cheesy @ sign)? We’re at the bottom along with Washington State, DC, Georgia and Illinois.
However, when compared to other countries, the US as a whole is not traveling in the fast lane.
Internationally, South Korea came out on top for having the highest level of “high broadband” (faster than 5Mbps) connectivity. 64 percent of the country fell into this category, compared to 48 percent in Japan, and 35 percent in Hong Kong. The US came in seventh on the list with only 20 percent.
The US fares even worse when it comes to just “fast” connectivity (greater than 2Mbps). South Korea came in first again with 93 percent, followed by Belgium and Switzerland. The US ranked at number 24 with “only” 62 percent of the country having access to broadband speeds of over 2Mbps.
Having access to that broadband and not having to pay an exorbitant amount for it? Well, that’s something for another report.
Our district subscribes to Discovery Education Streaming, an excellent collection of video and other resources for instruction at just about any level and for almost any topic.
We’ve made it available to teachers for a couple of years now and most of them love the materials and use the service constantly.
However, our IT department this week sent out a message asking that our middle and high schools not use the site from now until June 13th.
Because for the next month those students will be taking the state standardized tests (the SOL’s in our local vernacular) online and, when you have limited bandwidth, it must be reserved for high priority activities.
And nothing gets a higher priority in American education than testing.
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