We are aware of some ongoing issues with wireless connectivity affecting ResNet Wireless in halls and eduroam on campus.

Common symptoms of these problems may include:

• Intermittent slowness
• Connection attempts time out
• It may take several attempts to connect
• Your computer forgets the saved network password

The problem appears to exist with some of the new wireless hardware that was installed during August 2011. We are currently talking to our hardware supplier to diagnose and resolve these problems, although progress is frustratingly slow.

We at ResNet are very sorry that these issues are causing inconvenience for our users. If you are affected by any of the symptoms described above, the best workaround is to use your ResNet connection via the cable. There are no known problems with the wired network.

We will post an update on this blog when the issue with ResNet Wireless has been resolved, so you might like to bookmark it.

Update 2011-Oct-18 18:11
As described in this IT Services News Item emergency work will be taking place, and ResNet Wireless will be unavailable:

• Wednesday, 19 October, 06:00-08:45
• Thursday, 20 October, 06:00-08:45

ResNet Wireless is due for an upgrade so that we can increase the number of people who can connect to it.  As part of that work, we're making major changes to the infrastructure behind ResNet Wireless on Tuesday, September 6th 2011.

ResNet Wireless will experience intermittent outages throughout the day.

Once the work is complete, anyone using ResNet Wireless will need to re-run the ResNet Wireless Setup Wizard to continue using it.

Important maintenance work on the power supply to the Stoke Bishop area will be taking place on the 4th August 2011 between 2pm and 6pm.

This will affect ResNet, Wireless (all wireless, including ResNet & eduroam services), Admin network and telephone connectivity at all Stoke Bishop halls.

Your hall office should be able to answer any further queries that you may have.

4th August 2011

The following locations will have no network (ResNet, Wireless, Admin Network) or telephones:

• University Hall
• Durdham Hall
• Haitt Baker
• Wills Hall (Including The Holmes)
• The Downs Workshop
• The Grounds and Gardens offices etc
• Churchill Hall
• Badock Hall

Additionally, some (possibly all) of Hiatt Baker will be without power for the duration of the work.

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

At about 22:15 this evening a power cut started affecting some parts of Bristol City. This means that some University residences have lost power, and some networking equipment that feeds other residences is also without power. Currently, wired and wireless ResNet is unavailable at several locations (click here for the current ResNet network status).

ResNet should automatically return to service when the power comes back on. For more information, please refer to this IS News article.

Important maintenance work on the power supply to the Stoke Bishop area will be taking place on the 7th and 8th April 2011 between 8am and 4pm.

This will affect building power, ResNet, Wireless (all wireless, including ResNet & eduroam services), Admin network and telephone connectivity throughout Thursday 7th and Friday the 8th.

Your hall office should be able to answer any further queries that you may have.

7th April 2011

The following locations will have no power, network (ResNet, Wireless, Admin Network) or telephones:

• University Hall
• Durdham Hall
• Haitt Baker
• Wills Hall (Including The Holmes)
• The Downs Workshop
• The Grounds and Gardens offices etc

The following locations will have power, but no network (ResNet, Wireless, Admin Network) or telephone connectivity:

• Churchill Hall
• Badock Hall

8th April 2011

The following locations will have no power or network (ResNet, Wireless, Admin Network).  The phones should stay up.

• Badock Hall
• Churchill Hall

This morning (Thursday 17th March) we are experiencing problems with the University network. This is affecting all areas of the campus, including academic departments, wireless and ResNet.

The networks team are currently investigating the cause and working on a fix for this issue. We will post more details when they become available.

In the meantime, we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Update 10:29 by Mark:

The network team has isolated the problem and all service are believed to be working.  We are currently in an 'At Risk' state as we are only running on one core router.  I'll update this again when the fully resilient service has been restored.

Update 12:38 by Mark:

We can now report that all services should have returned to normal. We have identified that a network switch was the cause of the problem and this has been isolated. For further updates please see the IS News Item for further updates.

We've been having ongoing problems with our database since the scheduled maintenance on Wednesday.  It was unavailable from 2am-8:30am Thursday, and the same again on Friday.  The database team are on the case, and the issue is severe enough that they've opened a support call with Oracle (who supply our database software).

We're waiting to hear back from Oracle, but it's likely that some of the ResNet systems will be unavailable for periods of time over the weekend.  The database team are planning to put some workarounds in place that should minimise the amount of time systems are unavailable.

The ResNet team are also investigating to see if there's anything we can do to minimise the impact on peoples connections, especially those who are due to move out of the bandwidth restricted network on Sunday night/Monday Morning.

Because of essential maintenance to one of the university database servers, the following services will be unavailable between 8:30am and 12:30am, Wednesday 2nd March.

• My ResNet Control Panel will be unavailable
• The ResNet Bandwidth Monitoring Gadget will not report data use correctly
• The ResNet Registration System will be unavailable
• The ResNet Live Status screens on the ResNet Website and the IS website will be unavailable

The helpdesk connection troubleshooting tools will also be unavailable, so there will be a diminished support capacity for ResNet until about 1pm.

For more information about other services which will be affected by this maintenance work, see the IS website: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/is/news/2011/diversp17feb.html

We experienced problems with ResNet Wireless in all areas overnight. Service was restored at around 9:30 this morning, and we are actively investigating the root cause in order to avoid similar problems in future.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused for you.