Attention eClass Users,

Through the Fall 2023 and Winter 2024 terms, eClass monitoring has recorded a series of short system degradations for eClass. These events are typically less than 3 minutes but during that time, site users experience poor performance as pages fail to load. 

Our hosting team has traced the problem to a range of web traffic request types that are rapidly repeated over a short period of time. To prevent these interruptions from continuing, we will be implementing a change that limits the request rate for these actions on the site. 

This change will be implemented tonight, January 31st 2024 at 11:00PM.

While this change has been vetted in test environments, there may be unexpected impacts to some courses on eClass once the change is implemented. We will be working with our hosting team on an ongoing basis to ensure that the site's functionality is unaffected, while identifying additional courses or activities that may need to be limited.

Of particular note, courses that contain a high amount of directly uploaded video mp4 files are at risk of being affected by this change. As a reminder, the recommended practice for displaying videos in eClass is to embed using a 3rd party storage tool rather than directly uploading video files into eClass.

Instructors who notice any poor performance in their course after this change should contact eclass@ualberta.ca.

Regards,
IST eClass Support