Wireless Network (WiFi)

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.