Here’s what we know about Beaufort County schools’ widespread computer problems
An ongoing internet issue in Beaufort County School District has led to dropped Zoom classes, slowed service and a new wave of restrictions on teachers’ computer use, according to an internal email obtained by The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette.
The issue, which began when students returned from winter break to full-time, in-person classes two weeks ago, won’t be fully fixed until mid-February, technology services officer Mark Chauhan said Friday.
The district’s technology department sent out an email to teachers Thursday that asked them to limit their computer usage to “only what is educationally necessary,” limiting “personal web activity” and “streaming of video and audio,” and closing the lids on devices if they weren’t required for class.
“We understand the above may cause significant inconvenience and could impact instruction,” the email read. “However right now we have no alternative.”
The issue lies in the district’s firewall, which creates a bottleneck in internet traffic as it scans student and staff internet usage for inappropriate content or viruses.
Since Jan. 4, more students have been logging on at school during “peak times” — between 8:45 and 9:45 a.m., and right after lunch, Chauhan said — and that pushes the capacity of the firewall, which can scan around 500,000 “packets” of information from the internet per second across the district.
The issue is compounded by new online programs the district has begun using since the start of the pandemic, including Zoom (used for video conferencing in staff meetings and hybrid and remote classes), Adobe Creative Cloud (used by career and technology education classes to access programs like Photoshop), Dyknow (used by teachers to monitor students’ screens) and Seesaw (used by elementary schools as a digital classroom platform).
All of this combines to cause internet lag, which leads to online classes and meetings being disconnected.
Chauhan said the issue mostly affects people on school campuses connected to the district’s network, but online-only students and teachers can still experience issues if they’re in meetings with someone on campus, such as a “hybrid” elective class with in-person and remote students or a staff meeting.
The district has been “tweaking” its firewall since Jan. 4 to increase its processing speed, Chauhan said.
But the biggest issue lies in the hardware, which was slated for an upgrade this year. Originally, that upgrade was supposed to happen over winter break, but it will likely take place instead in the second week of February, according to Chauhan.
The issue shouldn’t affect end-of-course testing, which has already begun. Chauhan said schools store test data in a “proxy server,” which isn’t impacted by the district’s network.
“No matter what happens with our network bandwidth, that kid can still complete their test,” he said. “The test is stored on our proxy server, and it’s uploaded when we have bandwidth available.”