Disconnect for a moment: Is it really the Wi-Fi or the Chromebooks?

Opinion: An Oakmont Computer Nerd’s Perspective

By Harris Morand; Freshman

There’s nothing worse than bad Wi-Fi, especially these days. After all, a lot of apps require an Internet connection. And, obviously, websites do as well.

With the consideration of how large the Internet is (the Internet would take an estimated 5 Exabytes of storage or 5,242,880 Terabytes). Hypothetically, with the prices of today, it would cost more than $90 Billion to store the whole Internet in the form of 20 Terabyte Seagate Exos HDDs, with a data recovery plan. 

But regardless of you being a computer nerd like I am, it should be evident that not having an Internet connection means losing access to a large part of the world.

Speaking from experience with being from Gen Z, we and most Millennials, can’t be without our phones. And without Wi-Fi or cellular data, Oakmont students can’t Snap each other 10 million times a day. 

I’m kidding, by the way. Well, maybe not about the latter.

But what I’m certainly not kidding about is the school WiFi at Oakmont Regional High School. It’s really slow, weak, and problematic in some areas. 

School is becoming increasingly more digital. When the pandemic started, school had become completely digital. Now, we are back in school, but most of our work is online. According to many, it is expected that by around the year 2050, schools will be fully digital, in the form of VR (virtual reality).

Many also believe that if implemented correctly, digital education can improve how teachers can teach, and how their students can learn.

But for now, like many other neighboring schools, we’re with the Chromebooks at Oakmont.

Yet, what could be considered an outstanding issue with schools becoming more and more Internet-based is the Wi-Fi situation. I feel that there are 2 main issues in regard to the school Wi-Fi. They are:

• Strength of the Wi-Fi / how well the signal can reach areas.

It is no lie that in some areas of the school, the Wi-Fi is garbage. Whether it’s in the locker rooms or the Science wing, slow Wi-Fi is just plain annoying. I’m sure everyone knows that feeling when it takes what feels like 50,000 years for your Google search to load. And then, you are left to realize that none of the images or bottom results have loaded. And then, the teacher gives out a web-quest assignment.

Speaking from memory, I’m also sure we all remember the morning when the school Wi-FI was borderline nonexistent, to the point where it had to be announced that there were issues with the Wi-Fi and networking. Our Wi-Fi was down for ⅓ of that school day.

Unless we all had Ethernet (a wired connection to the router/source of Wi-Fi), the distance between us and the source(s) of Wi-Fi may impact performance. However, other things can affect the Wi-FI too. Things like walls, objects, and other obstructions, can make it harder for Wi-Fi to spread around. As a result, signal density is impacted.

• Are our Chromebooks the problem?:

Distance and obstructions are big problems. But there’s one other thing. 

Remember when I brought up Ethernet? Well, if you know what an Ethernet port looks like, you will notice there isn’t a port for that on our Chromebooks. Reasonable; laptops are mobile devices, and Ethernet isn’t a very mobile thing.

But, if you look at the specs of our Chromebooks (to do so, go to Settings > About Chrome OS > Diagnostics), you will find something very interesting, if you are a computer nerd like I am.

Besides seeing the rather questionable choice of your CPU (I mean seriously, the Intel Celeron N4020 has 2 cores/threads, and has a max speed of 2.8 GHz that runs at 100% usage with CoolMath games, or a whopping 5 Chrome tabs), you will notice that you have around 4 gb (3.72 GB, to be exact) of memory (RAM, for the sake of simplicity).

Most average PCs have 16 or 32 gb. 

With less RAM, your computer can be a lot slower, and might not be able to take in bigger loads of data at once. So, in the case of our Chromebooks, the limited amount of RAM we have might be the reason why our Chromebooks are slow at times.

In addition, think about how often we use our Chromebooks. Then, think about how much everyone else does. All while being on the School Wi-Fi.

What this means, is that all of our Chromebooks, which may be running demanding web-based applications or functions, are on the School network, all at once. This can put a lot of stress on the network, and could result in things like slow performance to a full-on crash of the network.

You probably know the feeling when everyone in your family is on your Wi-Fi, and your phone feels slower than those kids who “got lost on their way” to their least favorite class.

The results of 3 recently conducted Google internet speed tests that I had conducted state that the AWRSD Wi-Fi network had an average download speed of 93 megabytes per second, and an upload speed of 110.5 megabytes. These results were with a strong Wi-Fi connection. According to MYMOVE, the average speed of the internet in the US is around 24 Megabytes for download, and 3 megabytes per second upload. 

It could be the Chromebooks that are slow, not the Wi-Fi. After all, the results from the speed test show that the school LAN (Local Area Network) had fast upload and download speeds. Or, maybe all the School Wi-Fi memes were right.