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.

[Update 26-10-2011, 14:00]  Looks like a fibre cable connecting the ResNet switches in the West block to the local distribution switch was broken.  We have now switched to an alternative pair of cables and we're now back up and running.  Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

The major symptom seems to be that if you've got a Mac, running the latest version of Safari (5.1.1), and the latest version of Lion (10.7.2) then you can't access the activation system to set up your connection.  The page appears to load, but is blank.  The last couple of computers I've looked at which have the problem can't open the Keychain App either.  This may or may not be related!

We're actively investigating this problem, and trying to work out what's going on so that we can fix it.  To be honest, we're not making a whole lot of progress at this stage.  Safari appears to make the initial connection to go.resnet, but then stops talking to the server halfway through.  It's all rather baffling!

Workaround:
We do however have a workaround for the problem.  It seems alternative browsers (eg Firefox,Opera or Chrome) can load the activation system fine.  So, if you've got an alternative browser, use that to activate your connection then go back to using safari once your connection is active.

If you don't already have an alternative browser on your computer, use a friends computer to download one and then transfer it to your computer by USB stick.

Update 2011-10-26:
I think I've fixed this.  Lion users should now be able to activate their ResNet connections with Safari.  As a bonus, some customers who were finding the activation system slow may find it to be a bit quicker now.

If you're still experiencing problems activating your ResNet connection, please get in touch with the IT Service Desk.

We're not sure what's causing the fault yet (although some signs are pointing towards a faulty power supply) and we don't have anyone available to get up there today to look at it.

We'll get someone up there as soon as we can, but until then we suggest using the ResNet Wired service instead as that's not affected by the fault.

We will update this post when we've got more info.

[Update 26-10-2011, 12:30]  The vast majority of access points are working in Churchill but one WAP on the ground floor of A block and another on the top floor of H block are still down.  We have instructed our cabling contractor to troubleshoot and repair these two connections as soon as possible.  Wired ResNet is still working fine.