By John Oldach
The internet speeds in HHS have  been very slow recently due to problems with a Verizon line splitter and a new firewall.  At times it has been hard to even get on the district home page without waiting for the site to slowly load.

Slow connection speeds can be caused by a host of things, such as high bandwidth use and too many computers using the same network.  Widespread complaints by students have been heard by network technician Ryan Blanchard and the rest of the school’s technology department, and the staff is working hard to get the networks up and running at full capacity again.

“The issue is that one of the providers line is not working correctly, so instead of having two lines working one hundred percent, we only have one, so there’s a bottleneck,” stated Mr. Blanchard.  The school has a Verizon line and a Comcast line, and the Verizon one is currently causing the problem.

Junior Patrick Dumas, who takes a Virtual High School online course, said that it is “fairly inconvenient to be unable to connect to the Internet during my online class periods,” and that his grades in the class are going down because of the problem.

Linda Henderson, the Data Systems Analyst for the High School, further explained the problems. “Well we got a new firewall, and we also have two lines, we have a Comcast line and a Verizon line, and we have been having some issues with the Verizon line. Hopefully it will get better…we have been working on trying to get it better,” she stated.

Internet speeds have improved in some locations in the school over the past few days.