Mains power is expected to be off from 09:30-11:00 at The Holmes and from 12:00-13:30 at Wills/Durdham Hall.

As they're switching the power off to the site, all the data networking equipment will be powered down as well.  This means that ResNet Wired, ResNet Wireless, VisitorNet and the Halls Admin network in these locations will be unavailable for the duration of the work.  Telephone service may also be interrupted.

There will be two breaks of up to 20 minutes each which will affect Internet connectivity for the entire university.  This includes ResNet Wired, ResNet Wireless, VisitorNet, Eduroam and access from campus PCs/public computer rooms.

Full news item at:  http://www.bris.ac.uk/it-services/news/2012/janet3april.html

IT Services apologises for any inconvenience this work may case. If you have any questions or issues regarding this work please contact the IT Service Desk.

IT Services
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/it-services

We've had a large number of reports of customers experiencing problems with ResNet Wireless and Eduroam.  The symptoms being that it your computer asks for your username and password.  Some times it will accept them, but it often takes multiple attempts to get anywhere.

We're actively investigating the issue, and we've been poring through mountains of log files trying to work out what's going on.

Workarounds:
The ResNet Wired service is not affected by this problem at all, so if you plug your laptop into the wall you'll have a nice fast stable connection that doesn't repeatedly ask for your password.

For Eduroam, we don't currently have a workaround other than "wait for 15 minutes then try again" as the problem appears to move to another location every so often and if you wait a bit then try again it may work better.

Update 2012-02-10 16:06:
We've managed to replicate the problem on a machine in the office, and we *seem* to have fixed the problem with that machine (it's a bit early to tell, but I've connected/disconnected several times with no problems)

We've released a new version of the setup wizard with a couple of tweaks, which should help.  You can re-run the wizard by connecting to the "ResNet-Setup" wireless network and then going to http://go.resnet.bris.ac.uk wizard in your web browser.

Update 2012-02-13 10:50:
OK, so the new wizard only appears to have fixed things for my laptop in the office and not anyone elses.  This rules out client side certificate issues.  We've got a few more leads that we're following up from deeper in the network infrastructure.  More news as we get it.

Update 2012-02-13 12:20:
The problem appears to be even more widespread than we thought, and is potentially affecting some eduroam clients as well.  We're currently working closely with the core networking team to identify a course of action.

Update 2012-02-13: 14:00:
We've hit a point with this problem where the next step is to escalate it to Cisco (the vendor that makes our wireless networking kit)  So we're in the process of raising a ticket with their support team.  Our best advice at this point is to use the ResNet Wired network instead where at all possible.

Update 2012-02-15:
Just a quick update to say we haven't forgotten about this problem and we are still pursuing it.  We are currently waiting for Cisco to get back to us.

Update 2012-02-16:
I think it's safe to say we've got enough detailed information to go on for now, so there's no need to email the service desk.  We'll update this blog post again when we have some news about a fix.

Update 2012-02-20:
We now think this is  a known bug in the firmware version our wireless controllers are running.  By all accounts it only surfaces if the controllers have been running for quite some time (as ours have) and a restart of the controllers should temporarily alleviate the problem.

Coincidentally there is a wireless maintenance slot scheduled for tomorrow morning, so we're planning to restart things during that slot.  Upgrading the firmware is a larger job though and needs some planning.  There's a meeting happening tomorrow which will determine when that upgrade can happen.  More news about that tomorrow.

Update 2012-02-21:
The upgrade to the new firmware has been scheduled for Tuesday 28th Feb and will be applied between 6am and 9am.  During this time all University wireless services will be unavailable.  See this news item for more details: http://www.bris.ac.uk/it-services/news/2012/wireless13feb.html

Update 2012-02-28:
We believe that the upgrades done this morning have fixed the problem.  If you continue to have problems with ResNet wireless, please contact the IT Service Desk and we'll investigate.

• The My ResNet Control Pannel (http://my.resnet.bris.ac.uk) will be unavailable
• The ResNet Activation System (http://go.resnet.bris.ac.uk) will be unavailable
• The ResNet Bandwidth Monitoring Gadget will not report data use correctly
• The ResNet Live Status screens on the ResNet Website and the IS website will be unavailable

History of this outage is shown below.

As of 12:30 today (19th Jan) just under a third of ResNet has lost internet connectivity.

Early investigations seem to imply that there is a power problem affecting Priory Road possibly extending as far as The Triangle.  This means we've lost power to the core networking equipment which feeds most of the centrally located accommodation - this has knocked out both Wired ResNet and Wireless ResNet services in the affected halls.

Hopefully, ResNet will just spring back to life when the power comes back on, but we will be keeping a close eye on it just incase.

Update: The following buildings are without service

• Chantry Court
• 33 Colston Street
• Deans Court
• The Hawthorns
• Northwell House
• Osborne Villas
• 121 Redland Road
• 29 St Michaels Park
• 30 St Michaels Park
• 31 St Michaels Park
• 32 St Michaels Park
• 33 St Michaels Park
• Unite House
• Winkworth House
• 97 Woodland Road
• Woodland Court

• Northwell House
• Woodland Court
• The Hawthorns
• 121 Redland Road
• Rodney Place

Please see the IT Services news item for more details, since some buildings other than halls of residence will also be affected.

We apologise for the inconvenience caused to our customers.

Until the issues can be resolved, the following ResNet services are unavailable:

• The My ResNet Control Pannel (http://my.resnet.bris.ac.uk) will be completely unavailable
• The ResNet Activation System (http://go.resnet.bris.ac.uk) will be completely unavailable
• All helpdesk troubleshooting tools will be unavailable
• Various back-end scripts are failing, and may result in strange behaviour from the bandwidth monitoring systems (the ResNet Gadget/RSS feeds won't be updating) , the network status monitoring, DHCP updates will not happen etc.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

[Update 14:10 05/12/2011]

The connection to Deans Court North has been restored.

• The ResNet DNS servers are slow and unresonsive, which effectively means that your connection may function slowly, or even not at all.

• The My ResNet control panel (my.resnet.bris.ac.uk) is slow and unresponsive
• The ResNet Activation System (go.resnet.bris.ac.uk) is slow and unresponsive
• Most of  our backend troubleshooting tools are playing up as well, which makes troubleshooting individual problems difficult for the Service Desk
• The Wireless ResNet authentication servers are caught up in this as well, so ResNet Wireless may also be unusable

Because of the widespread nature of the problem, we're expecting it to affect all ResNet customers (Wired and Wireless)

We're aware of the problem, and are doing everything we can to restore service as quickly as possible.  I've already started planning ways to stop the same issue hitting us again in the future.

Update: 21/11/2011 17:13
Good news and bad news.  The good news is that the load issues are beginning to resolve themselves and DNS seems to be back to normal.  The bad news is that somewhere in the last 2 hours we hit a (separate, but related) problem which means none of our web servers are currently running (so www.resnet/my.resnet/go.resnet etc are still dead)

We've got a lead on that problem though, and are working to get them back up again.

Update: 21/11/2011 17:50
And we're back in business!   Sorry for the inconvenience everyone.

[Update 17:10 15/11/2011]

Our network team has arrived on site and have found that the fuse board that supplies our kit has tripped.  It's now up to the electrical maintenance guys to reinstate power.  Once this is done ResNet connections should be back automatically.

[Update 20:21 15/11/2011]

It looks as though power has been restored, and Hillside Woodside has come back up.