During deployment

We hope you will have followed our tips set our under the heading "Before deployment" so you can immediately phone and surf the Internet on arrival. Bear in mind the following facts:

The connection in the mission area is much slower than what you are used to at home

The internet connection runs from the compound via a satellite to the Netherlands and has a limited bandwith. You share this connection and the available bandwith with all the other e-Welfare users in the compound.

The connection is slower because the available bandwith via the satellite is limited.
The connection is more expensive because of the high costs of satellite communication and the local infrastructure.
The connection is more liable to interference from the weather.

For these reasons, it is unreasonable to compare the quality of the connection in the mission area with that what you are accustomed to at home. But if everyone takes heed of the ten tips for effective internet use, the available bandwidth will be sufficient.

The availability of the connection depends on several factors:

Weather conditions in both the Netherlands (where the other side of the satellite link is situated) and the mission area.
Energy supplies.
Black hole situations.
Having consideration for one another.

Priority system

e-Welfare provides Internet access according to a priority system. Some applications use a lot of bandwidth. In order to share the available bandwidth as fairly as possible while enabling everyone to surf, e-mail and chat with minimum delay, applications have been divided into categories: Real-time applications, such as telephony, television and radio, have priority. As a result, Internet and e-mail services may be slower during peak periods. Peer-to-peer applications and other download programs, as well as streaming audio and video, will be placed in the lowest category (in terms of priority). The Internet connection is used mainly between 17.00 and 22.00 hrs local time. During this period, therefore, it is likely that the network will be slower.

In short, the e-Welfare connection is not intended for;

Downloading
Webcams
Skype
Online gaming
Streaming media
Peer2Peer (such as BitTorrent or Kazaa)

Traffic from these applications will be blocked or slowed down in order to allocate more bandwidth and speed to the other Internet applications, such as surfing, e-mailing and chatting.