
Bandwidth
A note about bandwidth. Now that you have your meeting room configured, it is time to log-on and get everybody on-line. This should be the easy part, right! Maybe. It will depend on how you are connecting and how much competition you have for the available bandwidth. Bandwidth, in simplest terms is how much information a connection can handle at any given time, and there are limits. The more connections you have at a single location for your meeting, the more bandwidth you will use. It is possible that if you try to connect too many computers at once, and we discussed instances in which multiple computers might be used, then you may use up too much bandwidth, if this happens, the connection may be degraded, or even dropped entirely, throughout the meeting which is, to put it mildly, disruptive. There may not be much you can do about the available bandwidth, but you need to be sensitive to it as you plan your meeting set-up. Also, this is more of an issue with wireless connections than with wired connections through an ethernet cable but in most locations, you will probably be wirelessly connecting to the Internet via Wi-Fi. This may require obtaining a password—another meeting preparation item. If a location does not have Internet, then your last resort is to use a Wi-Fi hotspot, probably from a smartphone. Should this become your last option be forewarned that this is rarely satisfactory, so (if possible) do not put yourself in the position of having to do this.