We appear to be having some problems at Deans Court.

Flats in the east wing have been unable to access the internet since about 7pm on Friday 23rd July, and the north wing has been down since about 3am Monday 26th July.  We're also receiving reports of problems in the West wing, although as yet these are unconfirmed.

We're investigating it carefully, and will update this post when we've got more information.

Update: 2010-07-26 09:40 East wing has come back up

Update: 2010-07-26 10:00 North wing is down because of power problems, hopefully it will come back up when power is restored.  The fault with East wing was due to a faulty fiber connection so should be stable now.

Update: 2010-07-27 08:30 North wing is still down.  Deans Court contractors are sourcing a replacement fuse which is the cause of the problem.  They expect this to be fixed today.

Update: 2010-07-27 11:20 Deans Court contractors appear to have fixed the power problem.  ResNet for North wing is back up.  All of Deans Court is now working.

It's the last week of the summer term and the vacation beckons. Thanks for using ResNet this year! Whether you are staying or leaving, here's some final info from ResNet and an opportunity to shape a new service from the university.

Have your say on a new email service for Bristol students

The university is looking to create a new email for life service for students and alumni. This would be provided under contract with the university by either Google or Microsoft. We'd like to know what you think about this. Please see http://www.bristolresnet.net/2010/06/16/new-email-service/ for more info and to comment.

Leaving halls? Get broadband in private accommodation

If you're moving into private accommodation next year you'll want to sort out an Internet connection. Unfortunately you can't get ResNet, but we have a guide to help you choose a broadband provider - see http://www.bristol.ac.uk/is/computing/advice/homeusers/broadband/

Staying for the summer? Watch the World Cup on ResNet with Freewire TV

With Freewire you can watch 25 channels of live TV including BBC1 and ITV1 on your computer on ResNet. Freewire doesn't count towards your ResNet usage allowance. See
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/is/computing/advice/homeusers/resnet/using/freewire/ to get started.

Regards,

the ResNet team

It's clearly not a good week this week.  We've now lost connection to a network device at Woodland Court, which means that 35 rooms at Woodland Court are currently without ResNet access.

We've been out to site, and it looks as though there's a problem with the uplink on the switch.  We're pulling together the spare parts required to narrow down the issue further, and will update this post when we've got more information.

Update Weds, 12:41
First trip back with the spare parts makes us think it's not the uplink, so it's probably the switch afterall.  Time to head back out there with a spare switch.

Update Weds, 16:22
OK, this is not an easy one.  We've tried swapping out the switch for a new one, we've tried new patch leads, we've tried a different port on the upstream switch, we've tried new fiber interfaces on both ends, we've tested the fiber run and yet we still can't find the fault.

It's very unlikely at this point that we'll be able to restore service before close of business today (Wednesday), however we will get right back on it first thing tomorrow morning.

Update Thurs 9:40am
We've traced the fault to the upstream swtich (which seems to have about 8 dead ports), we happened to have a spare one so we've replaced it.  Service has now been restored to Woodland Court.

We're really sorry about the inconvenience this has caused!

We've been experiencing some problems with the ResNet Wireless service at Northwell House and Winkworth House.  The wired service, and wireless access in other locations around the university are not affected.

There are two distinct issues, which have combined to cause a rather complicated and confusing result, so much so that I'm not really sure how best to describe the situation!

The main symptoms people have been seeing are:

• The wireless connectivity became unstable (we think on Monday, but possibly over the weekend), meaning that peoples wireless connections were unreliable.
• The wireless bandwidth accounting encountered a problem and started counting peoples traffic multiple times, leading to people being cut off for going over their quota - without them actually doing so.

We've made some changes to the wireless network which we think will improve the stability again, hopefully returning us to normal service stability, and we're busy fixing the bandwidth accounting.

We are picking our way through those who are affected by the accounting issue, restoring their bandwidth quotas and putting things back to normal.  Until we've completed this work, Wireless ResNet data isn't being updated through My ResNet or the RSS feed/bandwidth gadgets We will be emailing those affected with more details in due course.

We're really sorry for the inconvenience, especially during the exam season!

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

Between 08:15 - 10:15 on Thursday 15th April there will be a series of interruptions to the network service as follows:-

• the ResNet service
• wireless networks in the halls

The following networks should not be affected, but may be considered at greater risk of interruption:

• Halls computer rooms
• Halls admin network

Information Services would like to apologise for any disruption caused by this work. It is being carried out to correct a recently discovered problem, which if not corrected could lead to longer interruptions. We would also like to apologise for the short notice of this outage. The work has been been scheduled for Thursday 15th April in order to complete it before most residents return for the start of term.

The ResNet service hasn't been working at Churchill hall since 2:40am today. We've been up to Churchill to investigate, and discovered this is due to a power failure in parts of the main building, unfortunately including the ResNet cabinet which links Churchill to the rest of the network.

We're sorry for the interruption to ResNet for students in Churchill, and we're trying to get the power back on as soon as possible. We'll also get a separate power supply put in for our cabinet, so that this fault doesn't happen again.

Update: 10:50am The power is back on, and ResNet is now working again in all areas of Churchill.

The network at Unite House went down this morning at around 10:10, this is due to a power failure at Unite House.  We're keeping an eye on it, and when the power comes back up we'll check to make sure the network comes back up with it.

Update 17th Feb, 12:50: Everything is back up, and appears to be stable.

We will be doing some essential network maintenance on Wednesday January 6th 2010.  The nature of the work is quite involved, and it effects different types of ResNet Customer differently.  Please read the following sections to determine how you will be effected.

Customers on the main ResNet Network
This accounts for the vast majority of the people currently using ResNet.

Your connection should be considered "at risk" of interruption from 8am-10am although we anticipate the actual outage to account for about 30 minutes of this time.  During this time you will be unable to connect to university services on campus, and unable to connect to the internet.

Customers on the Restricted Bandwidth Network
At the time of writing, this includes about 14 people who have either been suspended for copyright infringement, or who have gone over their weekly bandwidth allowance.

Your connection should be considered at risk of interruption from 8am-6pm.  The networking for these customers is a lot more complex than for the majority of ResNet and while we anticipate an interruption of about 30 minutes at some point during the day, it's possible that there may be multiple interruptions.

ResNet Wireless
If you live in a residence which offers the ResNet Wireless service, your wireless connection should be considered at risk of interruption from 8am-6pm.  The networking for ResNet Wireless is a lot more complex than for the majority of ResNet and while we anticipate an interruption of about 30 minutes at some point during the day, it's possible that there may be multiple interruptions.

If you find your ResNet Wireless connection becomes unusable, please fall back to using your wired socket and then retry the Wireless later.

All Customers
Due to the nature of this work, it's possible that there may be a few wrinkles for us to iron out.  So if you notice something which has stopped working (and you're not within the "at risk" period described above) please let us know so that we can investigate it!

Updates and progress reports
We will update this section of this post as and when we have progress to report.

Updated 2009-01-06 09:34: Due to snow (staff availability), this work is proceeding slightly slower than expected. Therefore your connection might be out of action for a bit longer than stated above. We appreciate that more people than usual may be inside their residences today because of the snow, so we are working as fast as possible to get the work done.

Updated 2009-01-06 11:19: Most of the work has been completed, but we are still experiencing problems in some residences, including Deans Court. We are sorry for the continued problems, and will post more information when available.

Updated 2009-01-06 11:32:We think Wired ResNet connections are now working, but there is still a problem with Wireless ResNet in some areas, and we're working on fixing that.

Updated 2009-01-06 12:04:Contrary to previous update, wired ResNet connections still aren't working in all areas. Typically people affected will find that they can access internal university websites (eg www.bristol.ac.uk) but not external websites (eg www.bbc.co.uk). Problems appear to be worst in Deans Court/Chantry Court/Unite House/Winkworth House. We're still working on fixing the problem.

Updated 2009-01-06 12:27:Work is still in progress, but some users who experienced problems earlier are now reporting that their connection has started working, and they can access websites as normal.

Updated 2009-01-06 13:10:We've now completed our testing, and phoned back a number of people who reported problems earlier. To the best of our knowledge ResNet is now working fully in all areas. We're very sorry again for the extended interruption.

If you are still experiencing problems please call the Help Desk (7870 internal, or 0117 928 7870 external) to let us know as soon as possible, and we'll help you out on an individual basis.

Updated 2009-01-06 16:17:We've identified three users who are still having problems. These are all people in the restricted bandwidth network. We think in total there are about 14 people still affected, and we are working to resolve the problem for them. For everyone else ResNet is working normally.

Updated 2009-01-06 16:26:We've now fixed the problems for the people in the restricted bandwidth network. These people, and everyone else on ResNet, can now access internal and external websites.