The Tamalpais Union High School District (TUHSD) will upgrade Tam’s wireless Internet network before the start of the 2014-2015 school year in order to increase Tam’s bandwidth, according to district information technology director Rose Chavira. The improved network should provide more consistent Internet speeds across campus.

According to Chavira, a variety of improvements to the current system will be made during this summer, including a fiber circuit, which will increase the Internet bandwidth tenfold, and a secondary bandwidth which will provide continuity of web-based traffic in the event of an Internet shutdown. Additional wireless access points will be installed in order to increase the speed of wireless traffic on campus.

“These improvements will modernize the Tam High network in order to improve the speed and reliability of Internet access,” Chavira said. “[They will] accommodate the explosive growth in the number of district-owned and personal devices on the wireless network.”

Chavira added that the efforts of the district IT team relied heavily on the support of the TUHSD board of trustees to install the new network.

“The District IT team is quite small in numbers, and they support an enormous amount of technology. There’s been an addition to the team, which will enable the work at Tam High and other sites to be carried out this summer,” Chavira said. “The TUHSD Board of Trustees has been incredibly supportive of technology initiatives, and recently approved the allocation of residual 2006 Bond funds to expand and solidify the network infrastructure.”

Students have noticed negative effects of the current Internet system. “[The current network] has been really slow,” sophomore Matthew Copeland said. “I haven’t been able to get as much work done in class as I wish I could because of the quality and speed of the Internet. The time that [we receive] in class to work is really valuable, and if we can’t use it because of the materials that our school is giving us, I think that’s an issue.”