World Cup webcasts to strain network managers' nerves

Online football watchers could strangle your company bandwidth, warns Packateer

The BBC's decision to show England matches online could bring WANs and LANs crashing down as staff watch games from their desks, experts warn.

Mike Hemes, country manager for UK and Ireland at Packeteer, believes that the strain on bandwidth will cause major headaches for IT managers and will severely reduce business productivity.

"It is likely that millions of workers will log on to watch matches due to faster internet connections at work than at home," Hemes said. "This will generate a huge surge in network traffic, eating into the bandwidth available to run business-critical applications effectively."

Mike Gutsell, marketing manager of corporate communications at legal firm Osborne Clark, added, "IT departments need to consider the very real risk of systems crashing due to extra-heavy bandwidth usage if large numbers of employees view games online."

To tackle the problem, some companies may need to deploy tools to restrict the amount of bandwidth available to non-mission-critical applications and guarantee passage to other traffic. They should also remind staff about acceptable usage policies for the internet.