Attention! Notification Regarding High School student personal device access to the IISD network on personal devices.

At our High School locations, the IISD_WPA_P network (personal devices) accounts for roughly half of the wireless network traffic. The Technology Services Division identified a few trends in May of 2018 and shared those trends with district and campus leaders. The trends that were recognized were over 50% of the traffic on the high school WPA_P network was NOT academic in nature and some of the network traffic on WPA_P is hidden from the district. The traffic that is being hidden from our web filtering protections is via VPN apps on personal devices using WPA_P; this is a concern because the district is required to meet Federal filtering guidelines to protect students. Some example VPN apps that hide traffic from IISD on personal devices are: ZenMate, CyberGhost, TunnelBear, and NordVPN. When Technology Services shared the information last May, student VPN usage accounted for less than 20% utilization on the IISD_WPA_P network; this year the percentage has grown to over 40%. Due to the trends identified including the increase in VPN use, Technology Services and Academic Services have decided to remove student personal device usage, IISD_WPA_P, at the High School Campuses to best protect students from digital threats and increase academic use of the district network.

Whether you are a student, faculty, staff or a guest to our schools you can connect to the wireless network.  The information below is provided to assist you in connecting to the district wireless network

Over the last 10 years there have been many different standards and technologies used for wireless networking. However, for performance and security reasons, Irving ISD does not support all of those legacy standards. Prior to connecting, please ensure your device is capable of the following:

Wireless Protocol Support:
Wireless network adapter with support for 802.11n or 802.11ac
Wireless network adapter with support for 5Ghz frequency.
Note: 2.4Ghz support will be phased out in the district as we install more access points capable of covering the campus with 5Ghz.
 
Wireless Authentication and Encryption:
WPA2-Enterprise encryption
802.1x Authentication
 
Also good to know:
For security reasons, and because they interfere with the existing network, personal wireless access points are prohibited on campus.
Not all devices are supported on the wireless network. Examples of unsupported devices include, but are not limited to:
Amazon Echo
Amazon Fire TV Stick
Wireless printers
Roku Streaming Stick
Chromecast
Smart TVs
Amazon Kindle