Hi Everyone,

Has anyone experienced any issues with setting up an international LMS re: bandwidth needs?

I'm setting up a meeting with our tech guys in the next few days, but wondered how others have tackled this topic.

I've calculated a theoretical average of 30 MB for a 1 hour E-learning course/1 hour of reading E-documentation. I've then calculated that the max no. of concurrent users internationally will never peak beyond 5% of the total employee population.

However, I assumed that most employees are MB hungry at their PC and will usually have at least one other application open (and eating MBs) while the LMS runs.

I'm thinking that maybe we'll need to increase the bandwidth (telco providers) in some of our offices to avoid an internal network meltdown when we introduce an LMS.

Does this ring any bells with anyone? Any tips?

Thanks.

Hi Larry,

We have implemented LMS in various countries in Asia where one may face bandwidth issues in smaller cities. Some of the things that can help -

1. Since you mentioned your 1 hour content is around 30MB, I am assuming you would have audio/high-end animations in most of the screens. You can give an option to turn audio on/off, and also have audio transcripts for courses so that users can switch to lighter version if they have bandwidth constraint.

2. You can also try to evaluate how may average employees are there in each location, and then try to arrive at concurrent users per location. This information along with assumption of 30MB/course/hr would give you fair idea as to how much bandwidth would be required for e-learning initiative per location, and whether the same can be accomodated in existing infrastructure, or you would need additional bandwidth.

To explain with an example, if you expect at max. 5 users to be online from one remote location, they would consume 150 MB in an hour, which is equal to around 43 KBps for that location.

3. In my experience it can get difficult to increase bandwidth at different remote locations (resistance from IT, lack of b/w options etc), so if you are planning to role out e-learning to such locations its always good to have courses structured in a way that they can run on low b/w infrastructure as well.

Hope this was of some help!

Best,
Manish
G-Cube Solutions

Hi Manish,

Thanks a mil for the advice - very helpful.

Look at using locally stored content. I deliver across a few countries to over 15000 employees on a VERY constrained bandwidth (IT holds us to under 2M per asset, and streaming held below 16kbps). We push everything onto machines locally overnight and spare bandwidth during the training event- only use the bandwidth to pass results to an LMS (which is not bandwidth-intensive).

If possible, this strategy can be utilized effectively.

You have gotten great advice so far. Another option is to get a platform that has an LCMS associated with it (so intergral that they content is actually servered from the LCMS and tracked by the LMS) Yes there are a few of these. The advantage is that the content is actually servered up in as small pieces as needed, and bandwidth is minimal. Couple that with working on the content to keep it as thin as possible and the problem goes away. I have been involved in a number of installs internationally that accomplished this. Also (if desired) since it is LCMS, the content can be assembled differently for the same course, server up in better bandwidth areas. If I were you I would look seriously at this route because it does not limit you for the future. eventually they will get better bandwidth. (or so we hope grin) steve