Hello,
I have a class going using PollUnit for photo contests. Its going fairly well, and a bunch of 8-9th graders are getting used to how it all works.
At times the access is somewhat 'uneven' (slow or no access at all). We are in Shanghai, China so I wonder if there is a way to improve our connectivity? I assume PollUnit servers are somewhere in Europe, is there someone at PollUnit I can ask about this?
Regards,
R Wilder
Hi,
Thank you for the feedback. We ran some checks and the page loading speed was indeed quite slow (14s for the homepage).
Have you tried to use PollUnit from different locations? Does it make a difference if you are for instance at home or at school?
Kind regards
Philipp
When we use PollUnit in our school, it is often slow…our internal wifi speed is inconsistent. And in this setting, there may be a whole class trying to get to the same PollUnit simultaneously…I think that contributes to the problem. I think we are on a VPN by default.
I usually have better access when I'm at home. Using without my vpn…but I did buy a higher speed internet package from China Telecom. Shanghai's internet speed has always been 'patchy'. It alternates regularly between good, and short periods (1-2 minutes) of being nearly useless. It's always been that way since I've lived here.
Thank you for the feedback!
In general it is no issue if multiple users access a PollUnit at the same time. We have PollUnits with up to 1000 concurrent users.
So if it works OK for you at home, I guess the problem is within the infrastructure of your school and I'm sorry but there is nothing we could do from our side except keeping the data transfer as low as possible, but this is an ongoing task which we permanently work on.
OK, I can plan around this, keeping our in-class sessions less focused on using PollUnit from within the school. The kids know the internet access isn't the best anyways!
Regards,
R Wilder
Ok, we hope this works for you this way.
Thank you for your responses, Phillipp.
I'm just curious here. You don't have to answer if you do not wish to.
Are your servers in Germany? How large of a company is behind PollUnits? Are proxy servers used anywhere?
R Wilder
We use Amazons global distribution network for delivering most parts of our website such as images, fonts, javascript and styles.
However the application logic is executed on servers in Germany.