How are they able to support thousands of users at one time? I do a speed test and they aren’t like fiber optics level of speeds so how can they have so many users at one time? Is it because there are so many routers placed around the area? But even when I’m on campus I don’t see any wireless routers outside.
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Director of Technology for Public Education here.At my previous district, we supported 18,000+ students and thousands of staff on a 2GB internet connection with no issues. There are tons of ways to prioritize and limit rates to stay within your total speed limitation.
Modern network infrastructure allows easy and total control of anything and everything happening on your network. You can limit based on type of user/device, specific applications, etc. You can even set priority listings like: program A gets priority over program B if things are getting congested. For example, your device’s speedtest being lower, “normal” speeds is an indication that they have your account, device, and/or local network limiting your speed to only use a specific amount or a percentage of available bandwidth.
That being said, I do believe the district increased their internet connection speed to 5GB a few years after I left. So at some point you CAN hit a true bandwidth wall that requires you to increase your speeds, but you can fit a lot more onto a 1GB connection than you would expect.
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