With the World Cup in South Africa fast approaching and many people are planning to watch games live on their PCs. However with many games being played during the working day, how will live streaming affect the network in your workplace?
Streaming live television on a PC, like anything you do online, uses some form of bandwidth. If you watch live TV online, depending on how much you are watching, you may run into problems with bandwidth. For example if one person in the office is watching the football there may not be a problem, however if 10 people are watching it there may be significant deterioration in the speed of the network.

One way of getting around this is to adjust and enforce your company’s IT Policy, specifically the sites that employees are allowed to visit. By blocking the main video streaming websites so employees will not be able stream content, however this runs the risk of employees then finding obscure free streaming sites which may have viruses or spyware. While this option does eradicate most of the problem, you may then be left with a bunch of disgruntled employees who may then decide to just not come in to work on the day of the match.

An alternative would be have a television in the office to screen important matches (such as England matches). This will enable employees to continue working, keep up to date with the games and will improve the sense of moral in your office. The other added benefit is that people who do not want to watch the match can carry on with their work without having to worry about bandwidth and network issues.
Let us know if your company doing anything for employees during the World Cup. It would be great to hear any innovative ideas.