It is a long running joke amongst students and teachers that the school Wi-Fi is slow or that the Wi-Fi in schools hinders students from doing their work due to inefficiency. In an attempt to end this constant battle with slow Wi-Fi, NYC schools have implemented new routers across the city.
During Regents Week, Edison became one of those schools that have implemented these new routers to improve their Wi-Fi to provide a more sustainable network for students throughout the day, but some students and teachers are still experiencing difficulties with the Wi-Fi.
“The Wi-Fi problems are extremely distracting and I feel as though they are a detriment to my learning. There have been several occasions where the Wi-Fi is out for an entire period and I get no work done. It’s infuriating.” said Kimmani McCormack, a junior here at Edison.
“The Wi-Fi is pretty slow in the school, I haven’t seen an improvement within the school Wi-Fi, I actually think it’s gotten worse,” said Junior Gianna Andrade “A lot of times it takes 5-10 minutes just to load onto a single website or assignment, and it gets in the way of getting work done efficiently,” Andrade said.
“Everything is bad. Everything is slower. The kids are complaining, the teacher computers are slower, my personal computer is also slower, generally very slower than before. The switching between the two networks NYST vs DOEGuest is very tedious and annoying. NYST is for teacher computers and DOEGuest is for everything. Different networks make things more difficult,” said Ms. Elhabal, a math teacher.
Furthermore, the CTE classes based in technology also experience issues, “We keep having router changes and for my shop class specifically, it’s so much harder to work when the Wi-Fi isn’t working. It has erased my work multiple times and set me back a lot which is why I’m so thankful I get two periods for shop instead of one,” said sophomore Graphic Design Student Leighla Dacres.
We asked Mr. Kalloo, the head of the I.T department on how the school Wi-Fi has been affected by the changes with the routers
“Well, we’ve had an increase in bandwidth. We’ve actually doubled our capacity now. So, we should have faster upload, faster download speeds across our network,” Mr. Kalloo said, “We also have to remember that we’re a school that does one-to-one and we’re a pretty large school. One-to-one meaning every student has a device, every teacher has a device. So, you’re talking roughly 2,200, 2,300 devices that are online at the same time.”
Edison students were surveyed regarding where they experience the majority of issues with the Wi-Fi, 21% and 23% of students had stated they were experiencing Wi-Fi issues in the first floor and the second floor consistently. These floors are the ones that are most being used by students and teachers throughout the school day consistently. Some students also showed their concerns of the Wi-Fi issues being caused by this exact crowding of students.
“I think that the computers can’t handle multiple students using the same Wi-Fi and it gets in the way of finishing my work fast,” said Lauren Clarke, a junior.
We additionally asked students on which periods they would receive consistent issues with connectivity with Wi-Fi, the results turned out to be that during periods 2, 3, 4 and 5, there are the most reported connectivity issues with the Wi-Fi. This displays a pattern that appears to be consistent with during the periods where most students and staff are active on the networks.
While there has been a consistent effort for better and consistent school Wi-Fi made by the I.T departments in Edison, students and teachers both have experiences where there are still Wi-Fi issues present in this school. Despite these struggles, students and staff alike are still hoping for the school Wi-Fi to one day improve.
“As a student in IT Networking who heavily relies on technology to get assignments done, improving Wi-Fi access would make my life so much easier,” said Sage Kam, junior.
