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.

Information Services are carrying out some essential systems maintenance on the 11th August 2009, 10:00-10:30 which affects the following ResNet systems:

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.

One of the ResNet servers is feeling a little under the weather, so we’re going to have to take it offline first thing tomorrow
to run some diagnostics to confirm that the problem is what we think it is before we can log a hardware fault report.

The following services will be unavailable from 8:30am-10:30am, Friday 17th April 2009.

• My ResNet
• In-Room registration system
• Wireless ResNet
• download.resnet.bris.ac.uk/pub (ResNet software archive)
• www.bris.ac.uk/slink url shortening service
• www.resnet.bris.ac.uk browser redirection – the actual content at http://www.bristol.ac.uk/is/computing/advice/homeusers/resnet will remain available.

Currently registered connections will continue to function normally.

We will update this post when the maintenance is complete

Update: 09:42
Maintenance is now complete, and service has been restored.

We’ve received a maintenance announcement from Freewire TV, saying that they will be carrying out some upgrade work on Wednesday 1st April 2009 between 1100 and 1500.

This maintenance has been scheduled so that Inuk Networks Infrastructure can upgrade the encoders used for broadcasting the channels listed below.

Setanta Sports News
Setanta Sports 2
Setanta Sports Golf
Arsenal
Liverpool
Celtic
Rangers
ESPN America

Maintenance Schedule
Maintenance Start: 11.00 on Wednesday 1st April 2009
Maintenance End: 15.00 on Wednesday 1st April 2009
Maintenance Window: 4 hours
Planned Downtime: 30 mins per channel

We’ve just been informed that there is some electrical testing scheduled for Monday 16th March, 10am-2pm at Chantry Court.  The ResNet networking equipment will be powered off during this time, and so ResNet will be unavailable at Chantry Court.

This work will only effect customers at Chantry Court.

Information Services are carrying out some essential systems maintenance on the 7th Feb 2009, 08:00-14:00 which affects the following ResNet systems:

• My ResNet
• ResNet in-room Registration System
• ResNet Helpdesk troubleshooting tools (including those used by the out of hours helpdesk)
• ResNet Network Monitoring system (the traffic lights on the ResNet home page)

All fully registered ResNet connections will continue to function normally throughout this maintenance period, so most people won’t notice anything.

There are several other University systems which are also affected by this maintenance, for more details see the IS News website: http://www.bris.ac.uk/is/news/2009/systemsmaintenance26jan.html

There is some central database maintenance going on today, which means the following ResNet services are unavailable:

• My ResNet – www.resnet.bris.ac.uk/myresnet
• The in-room registration system – register.resnet.bris.ac.uk
• The systems which our helpdesk use to process application forms and troubleshoot connections

If your ResNet connection is working, it will continue to work unaffected. If you need to register your connection, move rooms, or connect a new computer to ResNet, you’ll need to wait until later this evening.

Other systems around the university may be affected by this maintenance period. For more information, see http://www.bris.ac.uk/is/news/2008/datahavenaugust4.html

Update: 2008-08-14 10:43
It seems that there were problems encountered during the upgrade which meant it took longer than expected.  Normal service was resumed at about 10am today (Thursday) and after a few minor wobbles we appear to be back in business.

We’ve just been informed by freewire that they will be doing some maintenance on the TV service this Wednesday, it shouldn’t cause any problems but we thought we’d warn you all just incase. details as follows:

Maintenance Details
This work has been scheduled so that Inuk Networks can upgrade the User Interface component of the IPTV platform. This improvement will enable future VoD menu features to the Freewire Television service.

Whilst we believe that this work will be completed within the specified times, we feel it prudent to make customers aware that this work is planned.

We do not expect there to be any interruption in your Freewire services.

Maintenance Schedule
Maintenance Start: 10.00 on Wednesday 14th May 2008
Maintenance End: 11.00 on Wednesday 14th May 2008
Maintenance Window: 1 hour
Planned Downtime: No impact.