By Josh Chang
Technical problems led to an hours-long internet outage Monday morning, impacting students and teachers across the district. At the high school, students struggled to access Google Classroom and complete assignments. Many reverted to using their phones as personal hotspots, which can be cumbersome, slow and expensive.
“It was annoying and stressful,” said senior Mitchel Milun. “I couldn’t work during my free period, and I had to use my hotspot in order to present in class. Teachers printed out powerpoints so it was also a waste of paper.”
The WiFi came back online around 11:30 a.m., although Director of Technology Jay Strumwasser said that the network remained unstable. “The server actually had to be rebuilt this morning, and it has been going through updates. Every time it finishes an update it comes back on, and then it goes for another update,” Mr. Strumwasser said. “Once everything is fully running I’ll send an email to everyone.”
The network issue was first observed early Monday morning at Dows Lane, but it quickly became clear that the entire district had lost access. When asked for an estimated time of a solution, a member of EduTek, the company that the district contracts with to manage information technology, said it was “hard to say.” “Sometimes computers take longer than you think, so we’re really not too sure, but we’re hoping to get it cleared up shortly,” he said.
As of Monday afternoon, the underlying cause of the outage was still uncertain. “We know what the symptoms are, and we know those types of things, but what might have caused the problem to begin with — that still takes time to investigate,” the EduTek employee said. “Usually, it’s a matter of resolving the issue first and then, after the fact, diagnosing how it might have happened and how it can be prevented in the future.”
Mr. Stumwasser said that the next focus would be on preventing similar outages from happening again in the future, although he wasn’t yet sure of what the long-term solution would be. “We’ve been working on it and we have all hands on deck,” he said.
With less severe technology issues arising regularly at the district, including problems with the BYOD network last week, questions remained about why the system was so prone to error in the first place. “They need to get their act together,” said senior Chloe Banino.
