Question

My offshore students report very slow connection speeds. Is there anything that can be done about this?

Answer

Some of our offshore delivery sites have both technical and administrative issues that impact on the student download experience. Solutions can be complex and are rarely mono-dimensional.

In the past, certain access problems in China were solved through application of diplomacy and tact by staff here. In one such case, an offshore partner institution simply agreed to make available one of the much faster existing network connections for our students - and that solved most of the access and speed problems. However, we found that within a few months, network speeds at that location  had again dropped to unacceptable levels. It may be that the maintenance of a good working relationship between the ITS support personnel both onshore and offshore is more important than technical solutions such as hosting VU content on local servers offshore.

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