Studying Online;Succeeding through Distance Learning at University

Preparing for online study 27 
of the family for enough bandwidth. Online studying involves a 
great deal of video. Tere are many recorded lectures to watch, 
and you will need to take part in several live video conferences. 
Tat means you will need a good slice of the available band-
width. If you have relatively limited broadband in the house, you 
could fnd your studies interrupted. Videos will lag or pixelate 
when other household members are watching streaming TV or 
playing online games. But they will also have difculties if you 
are using a great deal of bandwidth for studies. It is a recipe for 
arguments ...! 
Tere are two ways out of the problems caused by having to share 
broadband bandwidth. One is to upgrade the broadband account, 
so you have greater bandwidth. If you can get “fbre to the home” 
(FTTH) or “fbre to the premises” (FTTP) broadband, this will be 
ideal. Many fbre broadband suppliers only operate “fbre to the 
cabinet” (FTTC) broadband. Tis only provides fbre speeds to 
the telecoms boxes in the street. Te remainder of the journey to 
your home uses copper cables, which are slower than fbre. As a 
result, you can’t get the top speeds. You can get very high speeds, 
but it depends on the distance between your home and the tele-
coms cabinet. However, the supply of the top speed FTTP is lim-
ited. Only a few operators supply this form of broadband, and it is 
more expensive. Even so, it is worthwhile investigating if you can 
get better broadband in your area. Even if you can only get FTTH 
broadband, some suppliers use technology to squeeze more speed 
out of the system. 
If you cannot get better broadband in your area or can’t aford it, 
you will need to consider the second way out of the problem of 
sharing the connection with others in the household. Tis is about 
scheduling and cooperating. You might need to consider watch-
ing your online lecture videos in the mornings, leaving the family 
to be able to stream TV in the evenings, for example. Carefully 
timetabling your study periods to ft in with the rest of the house 
can save arguments and make studying a more enjoyable experi-
ence as you won’t sufer lags on video lectures. Also, check out 
your broadband router’s settings. On some, you can change the 

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