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Schoology, the popular online learning platform now being depended on by teachers and students across the state of Minnesota during the coronavirus pandemic, was unprepared to handle the initial rush of distance learning, according to internal emails obtained by 5 INVESTIGATES.

Hundreds of students reported slowdowns and error issues during the first days of distance learning in Minnesota.

Know more: what is an administrator

Redwood Area Schools Technology Director Stephen Lien said those problems continued for staff and students through the end of last week.

"If I were to give them a grade, it would be a D- minus, barely passing," he said. "Basically all the functions that it"s supposed to have simply had been failing."

A Schoology representative said an "unprecedented number" of users—more than triple what they had seen just weeks earlier—was the biggest peak in the company"s 10-year history.

"As you can imagine, this can put a strain on certain areas within Schoology," the email states.

The company reassured schools that they were "continuously monitoring these factors" to keep similar issues from occurring. Servers were expanded, code was tweaked and engineers were brought in to assist with the fix, according to an email chain between school district technology directors across the state.

Look at the basic radio configuration settings for a Cisco 350 access point. These types of settings are common for other access points as well.

One parameter that you should set is the service set identifier (SSID). The SSID provides a name for the specific wireless LAN that users will associate with. For security purposes, it"s a good idea to set the SSID to something other than the default value.

Know more: what is a lan cable

For most applications, set the transmit power of the access point to the highest value, which is typically 100 milliwatt (mW) in the United States. This will maximize the range of the wireless LAN. The actual maximum effective power output is 1 watt, but the lower transmit power allows enough margin to allow the use of a higher-gain antenna and still remain within limitations.

In the United States, set the access point to operate on any one of the channels in the range from 1 through 11. When installing only one access point, it doesn"t matter which channel you choose. If you install multiple access points, or you know of a nearby wireless LAN within range of yours, you need to select different non-overlapping channels (such as channels 1, 6, and 11) for each access point within range of one another.

As a minimum, activate wired equivalent privacy (WEP) encryption as a minimum level of security. You"ll need to assign an encryption key that all user devices will need in order to interface with the access point with encrypted data. If you choose to implement 40-bit keys, enter 10 hexadecimal characters, with each character having the value of 1 through 9 or A through F. The 104-bit keys require 26 hexadecimal characters. Keep in mind that 40-bit keys correspond with 64-bit encryption and 104-bit keys correspond with 128-bit encryption to the addition of a 24-bit initialization vector in both cases.

A DHCP Server is a network server that automatically provides and assigns IP addresses, default gateways and other network parameters to client devices. It relies on the standard protocol known as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol or DHCP to respond to broadcast queries by clients.

A DHCP server automatically sends the required network parameters for clients to properly communicate on the network. Without it, the network administrator has to manually set up every client that joins the network, which can be cumbersome, especially in large networks. DHCP servers usually assign each client with a unique dynamic IP address, which changes when the client’s lease for that IP address has expired.

Read more: dhcp process

When to use a router/switch as your DHCP Server
There are many enterprise companies who are still using DHCP for IPv4 on their routers/switches.  This is typically done by the network administrator who needs to get a DHCP capability up and running quickly but does not have access to a DHCP server.

The HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw is our pick for the best laser printer because it’s easy to use, produces brilliant results, and enjoys laser printing technology’s superior reliability. No matter how long you leave it sitting unused, you can turn it on and it’ll start printing more or less right away – and without wasting any toner on cleaning cycles.

Though it’s more expensive than a comparable monochrome laser printer, it’s also far more flexible. In addition to crisp text, it produces vivid colour graphics and can even turn out respectable photos (just not on photo paper). Print speeds are quick, and per-page costs are reasonable. This model’s smartphone-style colour touchscreen makes changing settings simple, and HP’s PC and mobile software is the best in the business.

Unlike most other printers, the M254dw can connect to 5 GHz wireless, which should speed up big print jobs and helps ensure that the printer won’t lose connection over time.

Read more: hp printer repair

The M254dw can take a minute or two to get going for very large print jobs. We saw this issue only once during testing, but several owners have reported it in reviews. Because this printer comes with a skimpy set of “starter” toner that’s good for only 800 black-and-white and 700 colour pages, you’ll probably need to buy replacements within a year or so of purchase.

Getting cartridges with the highest possible capacity makes the best financial sense. Thanks to all that toner, this printer is big (long, in particular) and heavy; make sure you have a space that can accommodate it. And, of course, the M254dw is just a printer – it doesn’t include copy, scan, or fax capability.

The industry is about to reach an inflection, because there is little to be gained from new manufacturing technologies anymore, except for a few rich companies and applications. For most of the industry, the free ride is over, and they will have to find new ways to get more from the same.

We are seeing potential opportunities everywhere. GPUs successfully managed to force a programming paradigm shift because without it, it was impossible to get anywhere close to optimal performance from the hardware. We are seeing similar things happening with AI across the board – even system companies coming in and designing their own devices because they can find nothing on the market that comes close to satisfying their needs. They are also creating new languages, programming paradigms and tool chains to support them.

Read more: what is the average salary for a network engineer

We are seeing opportunities within all segments of the market for processing near memory. This ranges from small IoT devices to data centers. It is not difficult to make these devices and demonstrate how much better they are, but they come at the cost of requiring software changes.

We are seeing open source hardware looking like a viable option for the first time, but the industry is perhaps not quite ready with the necessary ecosystem and tooling. In many cases, no tools exist because the market for, let’s say, processor verification tools, was so small that it was unviable to produce tools for them. It will take time for the industry to catch up.

We are seeing systems where memory performance and interfaces are getting in the way of progress, because a single contiguous, coherent memory system is easier to program, requiring no thought from the software.