It’s one of those “must needs” that we need to keep us sane. Our phones, our laptops, our tablets, are all able to work because of one thing. The wifi.  Jillian Farley , a student at Friends for 12 years says “It could be better, We need improvement“. Piper Kendle has thoughts on the wifi connection here at Friends as well. “The wifi can definitely use some fixing. There are some areas where it’s better and some where it’s worse” she said. Matilde Murteira, an exchange student in her 12th year says “Most of the time it’s good but sometimes it’s slow and you can’t do anything”.

So, what’s the deal? Who decides whether the connection should work or not? More so, who makes the connection happen? Gregg Miller, the director of technology and Todd Tyler, the computer support technician

The root of this wifi problem was caused by no other, a computer. “It’s basically a computer that hands out addresses to everybody’s computer. We had an issue with it where it kept on failing. It would stop handing out addresses. So some people would be on and some people wouldn’t be on” said Mr. Miller. To Miller, it was a huge challenge. Miller said “We didn’t know what it was at first. It gave us really bizarre behavior. Some people were connected to the wifi. Some people were connected when they were plugged in. And then sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn’t work”. The source of this came from two different computers that would put out this function. Miller said “One of them would fail and we would plug one in and everything would be ok for a little while”. WFS’s internet provider was called to help fix the sometimes but not much, absent connection. “We got rid of what was not working here and moved that function to our internet service provider which is DCANet ”. Miller said.  According to Miller, the testing was on September 22nd and since then there hasn’t been failure at all. Miller carried on with “We got rid of what was not working here and moved that function to our internet service provider which is DCANet”. Miller said “Since then I have had 0 complaints up here”. 

Back in school after the pandemic, a special education teacher Jaime Lozano saw that the wifi can’t always be reliable. “The system goes down, or someone is working on a tower, or there’s too many people on the Wi-Fi hotspot and it cuts out,” Lozano said. “Due to covid 19 allowing schools to close down,” School districts struggled to acquire laptops and internet for online learning. Millions of students still lack reliably fast internet or a working computer – the basic tools to participate in live lessons from home “ said by USA Today. 

During last year’s COVID school year, tech administration had challenges with the change.“Not only do we have to have all the kids in the class to be able to use wifi and our computers but now we need a separate computer that’s gonna be zooming all the time”. Miller said “that put a huge burden on the wifi”. Covid affected the connection but not to an extent that teachers weren’t able to teach. “The connection got fixed in September and teachers were able to zoom in and things were ok,” Miller said. 

The thing that keeps us sane can continue on. We can learn as if there was no pause.