By Sam Fleury ’10
THE ROUNDUP

Widespread wireless connectivity problems on campus appear to be fixed.

After summer, schools have to get back into routines, but for a school based on technology problems can occur that are much more crippling than normal. Brophy this year faced a problem with connecting students and teachers to the Internet.

There were two problems interfering with the Internet connection at the beginning of the year: the random shutdown of access points and a conflict between sophomore computer network cards and the network.

According to Mr. Wess Housh, network administrator, the problem with the random shutting down of access points seems severe but access points shutting down didn’t happen often. However, when this did happen large groups of people would lose connection at the same time.

This problem was caused by some conflicting software that was changed to resolve this issue. No access points have shutdown since, Mr. Housh said.

The problems afflicting sophomore computers was more widespread because some teachers also use this model. It was a conflict with the network card in the computers and a recent update for the network. Anyone using these machines could not connect to the Internet.

With teachers and students unable to access Blackboard or any online sources, computer-based learning was crippled until changes were made. The network update was reversed so that all the computers could connect until a functional update is delivered. Intel will be sending the update as soon as possible.

The number of people on the network, despite common rumors, was not the cause of these problems. It may have made these problems seem much worse but it was malfunctioning technology.

Isolated problems still exist but those affecting Brophy as a whole are fixed, Mr. Housh said.

If problems with any computers should arise, students should go to K112.