From trying to open Student Connect to opening a blocked website at school to calling your parents because you left your backpack on the couch after pulling an all-nighter studying for an AP exam, school WiFi is something students use all the time, for better or worse. However, oftentimes problems begin to arise, especially in the basement areas where cellular service drops off a cliff as if the device decided to grow legs and live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The question then arises where cellular speeds are actually usable and maybe even good.
Mapping might seem like an arduous task for something so sporadic such as internet speeds; specific standards were set in place for the collection of them. The data was collected from April 20 to April 24 during the course of fourth hour each day. A cellular speed test every two classes on average and the mb/s download speed was taken as the numerical score used in the heatmap. For reference, a thousand megabites is equivalent to one gigabyte.
Now onto the results—or at least some of the more interesting ones. While talking to students at Brighton High School, a clear favorite came out after asking students where they think the best place for cellular data use is:
“In the STEAM Center, I can send a text message. If I’m in the basement of the BCPA, it’s not even possible,” senior Dawson Nicklosovich said.
“I feel like the STEAM Center is pretty good and… Yeah, mostly it’s pretty decent everywhere else,” senior Zachary Wyderko said.
“The STEAM Center. So things just don’t load in the main hall, and [in the] STEAM Center, they do,” junior Alexander Gallup said.
The STEAM Center was a very confident pick by students, but with that said, third place goes to the main window while walking down A hall—an interesting space mostly used for moving from place to place ended up having 859 mb/s down. Second place was taken by the overall favorite, the STEAM Center, with a score of 903 mb/s down. With all of that being said, first place goes to an underdog pick with a score of 1080 mb/s down, room C22—Ms. Elizabeth Crane’s class.
With the top three out of the way, it is now time to look towards the three worst spots for cellular data—but first, it is time to see if those three BHS students can accurately pick the worst spot:
“The BCPA,” Nicklosovich said.
“The PE locker rooms for sure,” Wyderko said.
“The worst spot for cell is definitely the main hall,” Gallup said.
Beating out F1 by only .5 mb/s down is the grade level principals’ offices with a score of 13.5 mb/s down. While no one should be surprised by the lowest scores coming from the lake level section of Brighton High School, the second-worst score goes to F2, otherwise known as the graphic design classroom, with a score in the single digits of 4.46 mb/s down. The worst score taken for the heat map, with a grand total of 1.25 mb/s down, came from right outside of F11.
With all of the excitement out of the way, does the cellular speed at BHS even matter when school WiFi covers the whole school relatively equally? Both yes and no—for chromebooks and other school devices on the Brighton devices WiFi network, it has little to no effect. However, for personal devices, it plays a much larger role. The WiFi at BHS is consistent but slow for personal devices, and in places like the lake level, it will be worse, while in upper-level areas like the STEAM Center and even the main hallway, cellular data will be faster.
