What are those towers on the schools?

Three tall towers have recently been added to the roofs of our school buildings. These are part of our Wide Area Network (WAN) upgrade that will bring faster Internet speeds to Elmwood and Shaw.

The new upgrade will bring close to gigabit speeds (several times faster than before) to each building to help improve multimedia viewing and downloads, web browsing, and to help with the increased bandwidth necessary for assessment testing.

Instead of costly fiber optic cables run between buildings, the new WAN, which operates on very high radio frequencies, is much more affordable without sacrificing speed. The towers are needed to elevate the antennas so that each antenna can see the main hub at the High School.

The new system was transparently activated last week with no interruption to either schools' network. The previous WAN equipment will remain in place as a backup.