Students who returned to school this year who were expecting the same internet connection as last year were sorely mistaken.

“This year they weren’t able to copy over the filters that we had last year, instead they sent all the filters over to elementary schools,” the school based technology specialist Jennifer Cory said.

Last year, students could send texts without it saying “not delivered.” They could log onto websites such as Netflix to binge watch their favorite shows with relatively good internet connection.

Without the filters from last year the school internet will be slower and will have sites that students were able to access last year as blocked.

In order to get sites unblocked, a teacher must go through a process.

“Teachers fill out a form to request unblocking, that will go to the principle, the principle will have to approve it and if the principal approves it, it will go to IT, and then IT unblocks it for our building,” Cory said.

When students came to school with their cell phones and laptops this year, they had a difficult time connecting to the school internet with their devices. The internet has progressively gotten worse and is nearing a point in which students are beyond frustrated with having to deal with the poor connection.

“In different parts of the school the internet is horrible, such as areas upstairs and near the bathrooms,” sophomore Kristina Regmi said. “The only place that the internet works really well is English class.”

When teachers tell students to take out their laptops to use as a part of class instruction, the laptops not only take a while to load up but once they do, the computers display a message saying they cannot connect to the internet.

Once the student presses on the internet icon on the bottom right of their laptop it says that the Fairfax network is not secured. Then, if a student presses on the connect button it takes a while for the laptop to actually connect to the Fairfax internet connection.

“This year we do have a new internet filtering company, last year it was securely and this year they switched over to lightspeed,” Cory said.

This new filtering that Annandale High School has is slowing down the internet, because it needs some time to smooth out.

Even data users have a painful experience when at school.

“I use my LTE data at school and I still can’t use it sometimes. The service that is allowed in this school is bad, so whenever I want to use my LTE I have to make sure that I’m in a good area,” sophomore Siryet Girma said.