Over the next few weeks, many students are returning to the classroom as the 2020-2021 school year begins. However, due to the continued concern of COVID-19, some school districts are remaining closed and offering remote learning, or a hybrid of classroom/remote learning. Either way, the face of education has changed for students for the foreseeable future. This means that parents need to prepare differently than they have in the past. You will need more than wide-ruled paper, pencils, and composition books. This year a reliable internet connection must be top of your back-to-school supply list.

You may have already experienced the need for a fast internet speed over the past several months, with most of America being quarantined on some level. Since more and more people are at home, they are connecting to the internet at the same time, all doing the same thing: streaming and surfing the internet. All of this traffic piles up after time. People access the internet to:

• Surf the web. General web surfing doesn’t take up much bandwidth, but when you multiply that by millions, or even by a few in the same home, it can slow things a bit.
• Access social media. This takes a little bit more bandwidth than general web searches, due to video content and the overall platform you are visiting. There is also the Live Stream aspect that increases the usage dramatically.
• Stream movies. Streaming 4K movies take a huge chunk of your bandwidth pie. With some providers, if you have a smaller internet package and someone is surfing the web on another device, they may see a slowing of their connection.
• Play games. Another Mb hog. Since games played online are active and require a constant stream, they can be even bulkier than movies.
• Work from home. Remote workers are not new and existed before the pandemic began but are now more common. While their connection is usually just an uplink to their office computer, they sometimes need to video conference to communicate with colleagues or clients. These connections require a strong and steady connection.

Now when you have a home with a family all trying to access the internet doing the above, you are going to have issues with everyone having a smooth and steady connection.

As school begins, students are going to connect to their local schools through either a classroom live stream, watching a prerecorded video on the school’s server, or downloading files of schoolwork to be completed—each requiring students to have exceptional internet service. But with so many people on the same internet lines, there are bound to be problems.

They don’t call it the internet superhighway for anything. That is exactly what it is, a giant freeway where everyone can drive on it, and everyone does. All internet companies use this superhighway to provide their subscriber’s internet service. How they get them there from the user’s home is called their network pathway. These are the roads that lead from the home to the highway; these too are also shared.

So, with a shared network and a shared superhighway filled with millions of users all sharing the same internet, conducting in the aforementioned internet activity, things can get quite busy. Just like regular freeway traffic can get congested and slow down, this highway can be slowed down by a variety of factors.

• Those limited by their plan. Think of this as the slow lane—those who can only go so fast. Your connection needs to work around other connections.
• Network outage. Road construction, an accident, or other detours can cause major delays. When an internet connection sees an outage, it has to reroute its signal to compensate, slowing your signal.
• This is especially applicable to wireless signals. Weather plays a major factor in how well a connection performs.
• Connections between you and the network. This, by far, is the most important of them all. It is how many stops a connection makes between your home and the internet. They are commonly called ‘hops.’ The more ‘hops’ a connection has to make, the slower the connection speed, called latency, will be. Think of them as stoplights you hit before you get to the freeway. Most internet companies have dozens of these red lights before they reach the highway.

 The more traffic and congestion with internet users like remote workers, remote learners, video streamers, and general internet surfers, the internet superhighway gets backed up faster than the interstate at rush hour. But there is a solution to your rush hour blues.

GiGstreem provides micro/fiber internet service to multi-family communities in Maryland, New York, Florida, DC/Virginia, and Florida. We offer lightning-fast speeds from 150Mbpsx150Mbps to 10GiGx10GiG. At these speeds, you will have the access you need to complete any project you need, be it your remote learning homework assignment in History or video conference with clients in another city. But what makes GiGstreem unique and better than the others?

• Guaranteed speed. When you hear of internet speeds, you always hear of ‘up to.’ Not with GiGstreem. Speeds are at least what you pay for, guaranteed never to be slower.
• Symmetric speeds. Most internet advertised speeds are not equal. With GiGstreem, your upload speed is equal to your download speed on all packages, giving you a smooth streaming experience.
• Connections between you and the network. These are the ‘hops’ we spoke of earlier. ‘Hops’ are determined by the network the traffic is on. GiGstreem does not rely on a shared network with other internet providers. We have our own dedicated lines. This provides a lower latency because of instead of a dozen ‘hops,’ GiGstreem’s dedicated network will only have less than two ‘hops’ to the internet. Giving you the express lane to the internet superhighway.
• No throttling. This is another issue that slows speeds across the internet superhighway. One that GiGstreem users do not have to worry about. We will never slow your speed during ‘peak hours’ or for data usage.
• No data caps. GiGstreem does not have data caps on any of its plans.
• Privacy is taken seriously. Your personal information is of utmost importance. We never store or sell information.

If you live in one of our multi-family communities, then GiGstreem is the internet service provider for you and your family. We are a perfect match for your remote work home office, and we will fill in that checkbox on your back-to-school supply list.

To learn more about how GiGstreem can meet all your remote learning needs, give us a call at 800-747-1830 or send us an email at [email protected].