Through endless loading screens and undelivered Snapchat messages, students and staff quickly noticed the network connectivity problems early on Friday, May 26.
In order to speed up the district’s network, Keller ISD removed the KISDstaff wireless and replaced it with a different network under the name “Keller ISD.” The switch was a surprise for many teachers, who had been notified that morning via an email that was sent at approximately 10 a.m.
“Many devices in the school were logged into the Staff wifi network for various reasons,” Journalism teacher Greg Janda said. “We had a scramble a bit to get those devices updated, so some things, like our info screens, weren’t functioning correctly.”
While district computers should have been able to switch automatically, the staff was advised to manually switch the network on mobile devices. Students who were logged into the staff network were unable to access the Internet and use various applications. In such an age of technology, many educational resources are put online for student access.
“Teachers depend on the Internet to work so they can complete relevant instruction, like using Canvas,” Janda said.
In order to complete schoolwork that required Internet connection or lessen data usage, students were advised to join the student wifi under the domain “kisdstudent.” While some students were unable to connect altogether, those who did still ran into network connectivity problems.
“Because of the mass amount of students trying to join [kisdstudent] after being on staff wouldn’t work, the wifi didn’t work at all,” sophomore Caroline Epperson said.
Although the staff network was replaced, students can still control their data usage and access certain websites and applications under the kisdstudent network with the password kisdis#1.
Streaming Services Congestion Leads to Block
Even when all network devices are reconnected to the appropriate networks, one group of internet services are unlikely to reappear before the end of the 2016-17: streaming video services.
In an e-mail to KISD Staff on May 25, IT personnel announced that significant congestion from streaming video was impacting the network.
“We have received several reports of slow internet speeds the last couple of weeks,” Keller ISD IT wrote. “The slowness is due to large amounts of videos being streamed on the network. At this time, we have blocked all streaming videos sites from the network. This will be in effect for the remainder of the school year in order to provide necessary internet bandwidth for curriculum aligned instructional activities.”
In short, that means no Netflix on school wifi for at least the rest of the year. After that?
“We are currently in the process of increasing the KISD internet connection in preparation for the 2017-2018 school year. The new internet connection will have triple the internet capacity of the current internet connection,” IT communicated in the May 25 e-mail to staff.
This isn’t the first networking challenge for KISD to work through — in 2015 techs began a “massive network infrastructure refresh” to help with connectivity inside schools.
