Well, it's 3:30pm on the Monday of Freshers' week and we have 4100 customers connected to the ResNet service which is about 95% of all people with a valid subscription.  This is 17 hours quicker than last year which is really great.  Hopefully people have found connecting easier because of this year's new wireless activation system.  Wireless ResNet has over 1400 distinct customers connected and wired ResNet has over 2600.

Our team are still taking lots of calls but the main problem seems to be passwords, which we can't deal with.  If you cannot remember your password (or username) then please visit the Service Desk in the Computer Centre with photo ID.

Update 20-07-2011

Telephone Services have now repaired the phones but currently the room number to phone number mappings are wrong.  This will be fully corrected in September.  If you need to know your internal number now, please dial 'zero' and ask the operator what your number is.  For any telephone related problems please contact Telephone Services directly <telephone-services@bristol.ac.uk>

Update 15:15 29-06-2011

ResNet is now back up and running.  Again, sorry for any inconvenience caused.  For any telephone related problems please contact Telephone Services directly <telephone-services@bristol.ac.uk>

Update 09:30 29-06-2011

Engineers are on site to fix cabinet back to wall and splice the fibre optic cable.  Assuming this all goes well and there are no additional breaks in the fibre optic cable then ResNet connections at Manor House should be back by this evening.

Telephone services will be re-terminating the phones but I don't yet have a date for this.  If this is causing you any serious problems then please contact Telephone Services directly <telephone-services@bristol.ac.uk>

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During routine maintenance of the switches in the data cabinet that feeds Manor House the cabinet became detached from the wall.  What's amazing is that this has not happen years ago as it was fixed to a plasterboard wall without any structural load-bearing noggins.

To make the cabinet safe we have had to cut the fibre optic cable and all phone connections - this means that you are without data (ResNet) and phones until we can do the following:

1) Get Estates to correctly fix the cabinet to the wall
A call has been made and they are expected to do this on Wednesday morning.

2) Splice the fibre optic cable that was cut
We are talking to our fibre contractor, who happen to be in the area, for a date and time to do this.

3) Get telephone services to reconnect the phones
Telephone Services are aware of the problem but we don't yet have a timeframe for this to be done.  They will need to see the severity of the problem first.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience this will be causing but hope to have your ResNet connections fully functional before the weekend.  I can't comment yet on the phones though.

This post will be updated when we have further information.

Regards,

Mark Elley
Residential & Mobile IT Manager

09:40 - We are currently experiencing problems with ResNet Wireless in all areas.  We are actively investigating this and hope to have it resolved as soon as possible.  In the meantime please use your wired connection as this is working fine.  This post will be updated as soon as there is any further information.

Update 09:50 - We believe this has been a problem since about midnight but has now been resolved.  The problem was with the primary authentication server but for some (currently unknown) reason the secondary server did not take over authentications.  This will be investigated further.

At 08:50 on Tuesday 11th Jan we lost power to our router that serves the following halls:

• Hiatt Bakter Hall
• Wills
• University Hall
• Badock Hall
• Churchill Hall
• Durdham
• and any other smaller locations in the Stoke Bishop Area

It seems that there is a power upgrade going on in Hiatt Baker which is the hall that feeds all others in Stoke Bishop.  Current estimate is that power will be down for 8 hours.  We are working through options for a temporary solution but given the short notice this may not be possible.  This post will be updated as and when we know more.

Update 09:30

It seems that this was a planned outage which we were not informed of.  Power has been restored and we assume the upgrade has been postponed.  Further updates when available.

If you're lucky enough to get a new computer for Christmas there is a big temptation to get it connected to your network and start surfing.  However, it's a really great idea to do the less interesting stuff such as updating your anti-virus and installing security patches before you get too carried away on the Internet!

For Windows:

• First thing I always do in make sure my anti-virus (AV) application is up-to-date.  Most new computers come with a time limited AV package pre-installed that they want you to pay for at some point in time.  You can either uninstall this now and install <https://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials> or make sure the current one is up-to-date and worry about it when it's due to expire - but never run a computer without up-to-date AV.

• Second thing I do is visit Windows Update, this can be found under Start->All Programs

• Lastly, there are always some essential applications that need installing. A great site called <http://ninite.com/> allows you to easily install many applications in one go.  I'd recommend installing Firefox, MSN Messenger, iTunes, Adobe Reader, MalwareBytes, and all the items under 'runtime'.  Of course there are plenty of other things to install from <http://ninite.com> and it save a whole load of time.

For MAC OSX:

• First off, contrary to popular belief, OSX does get viruses.  Protect yourself using the free AV package from Sophos <http://www.sophos.com/products/free-tools/free-mac-anti-virus/>

• Second, go to the Apple icon in the top left corner and click Software Update.

I hope this helps you avoid some of the pitfalls of owning a new computer, but if you do get stuck and need a hand then the Student Laptop Clinic is open from Wednesday 12th Jan 2011.

It has been a long-term goal for the ResNet team to have a firewall placed between ResNet and the rest of the University's network.  Over the past few months we have made the necessary changes to our infrastructure and today have made this live.  Essentially, nothing should have changed from a user's perspective as all previous rules on the 'main' firewall have been copied to the ResNet firewall.

If nothing has changed then why have we done this?

The answer to this is greater flexibility in how we separate ResNet (a network of personally owned machines) from the rest of the University's managed network.  Our intention is to give ResNet attached devices full access to the University's educational resources but limit access to unnecessary things such as faculty desktops; something that has previously been impossible to do.

In the unlikely event that something which previously worked, now does not, then please contact the Help Desk via the usual channels.

Dear ResNet user,

This is one in a series of newsletters sent occasionally to ResNet subscribers. Please see the bottom of this message to unsubscribe if you wish. You can also read this newsletter on our blog at www.bristolresnet.net

Jobs With ResNet from September 2010

Each year a large number of students join the team to help run ResNet and the Student Laptop Clinic. We are now recruiting for technical positions for the 2010/11 academic year.

On Friday evening we saw unusual activity which resulted in the loss of Internet service to the whole university, including ResNet, from inside the University and we are aware that some internal services were affected by this activity.  Staff worked through the evening and service was resumed around 1:00am on Saturday. Information was updated on the IT Services Status page <http://www.bristol.ac.uk/is/news/status/> throughout the incident and over the weekend.  There is a permalink to this status item <http://www.wireless.bris.ac.uk/blog/2010/05/07/dns-issue/>

In essence, an unusually large amount of traffic on the University network resulted in asymmetric routing of DNS queries resulting in them not being resolved correctly.  After identifying the problem, staff manually reverted the system to symmetric routing and restored service at around 1:00am on Saturday. This meant that sites during this period for which we had no cached DNS information were inaccessible.

Work took place on Monday morning to reduce the likelihood of this type of incident occurring again.

We apologise for the disruption caused.

--
Information Services
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/is

The 'Check your network usage' feature in MyResNet has been broken since an 'upgrade' to a key component of the system on 4th May 2010.  Basically we were not informing you of your usage so no restrictions - yey!

Needless to say this has now been fixed

Our current network devices have served ResNet well over the last 6 years but they are starting to get to the end of their useful lives.  In the past it has been possible for one compromised computer to disrupt access for many users in the same hall.  New switches have many more features that will help maintain the high availability that our users expect, even when other machines on ResNet are 'misbehaving'.

We will be updating this blog post with progress several times per day during the phases so please check back for updates.

Phase 0 (Completed)

Starting on Monday 15th June and ending Wednesday 17th June we are upgrading one cabinet per morning in the Hawthorns.  Please consider the entire residence 'at risk' during these 3 days but we expect that users will only see a single 2 hour outage.

Phase 1 (Mon 6th July to Fri 17th July)

All other ResNet locations will be upgraded over two weeks starting Monday 6th July and ending Friday 17th July.  Again, please consider the entire residence 'at risk' during these 10 working days but we expect that users will only see a single 2 hour outage.