Category Archives: Internet

Internet VPN Network Implementation October 22,25,26

Friday October 22, 2004 2:00pm - 5:00pmInternetadmin

Information Systems will be implementing an enhanced Virtual Private Network (VPN) system during the fall break (Mon-Tue, 10/25-26/2004). We will actually begin the work on Friday, 10/22. This work primarily involves the EMU Internet connection. While the work is being done there will be periods of time that the EMU Internet connection will not be available. This is likely to involve several hours of downtime for the Internet connection. To the best of our knowledge the outages will only involve the EMU Internet connection.

When the EMU Internet connection is "down" the following systems are affected:

Web Browsing: Users will not be able to reach any off-campus web servers. The on-campus servers such as www.emu.edu, webmail.emu.edu, blackboard.emu.edu, campusweb.emu.edu and calendar.emu.edu will still be available to on-campus users.
Email: Email messages going to and coming from the Internet will be temporarily unavailable. However, no messages will be lost because all will be held in "queues" until the Internet connection is restored.
Off-Campus Users: Students and employees who are away from campus and attempt to connect to on-campus resources such as email/webmail, Blackboard, CampusWeb and the EMU web server will be unable to do so.
Lancaster Users: Persons at the Lancaster campus who use the WinTerm/Terminal Server system (which is all employees) will not have access to the Terminal Server. They will not be able to use their WinTerms. The only computers that will operate are the standalone student computers and the classroom teacher station computers (however no computer will be able to connect to any computing resources at the Harrisonburg campus).

We will do everything possible to minimize the EMU Internet connection downtime but we cannot accurately determine how much of an outage will occur on 10/22,25,26. Any outages that occur on Friday, 10/22, will be as late as possible in the afternoon. The Critical Information Alert system will be used to keep on-campus users informed of the status of the Internet connection while the work is being performed.

Internet service unavailable

Friday October 1, 2004 10:58am - 11:43amInternetadmin

There was a disruption in service due to an nTelos router problem.

Inserv1 outage

Wednesday July 21, 2004 3:50pm - 4:10pmInternetadmin

Inserv1 was replaced this afternoon. The upgrade was uneventful and no services were disrupted because of the redundancy provided by Inserv2

Internet Outage – Service Provider Problem

Tuesday May 25, 2004 4:30pm - 5:15pmInternetadmin

Internet service began failing at about 16:30pm. DNS requests refused by nTelos, our Internet provider. Internet failed totally at 16:55.

nTelos called back at 17:20 to say they had a major failure that required a reboot of a big router which was done about 16:55. Everything was back on-line at 17:20.

Internet Outage

Wednesday February 4, 2004 2:35pm - 2:56pmInternetadmin

Unexpected internet outage, outside of campus.

Due to internet provider

STUDENT COMPUTERS DISCONNECTED TO SAVE THE NETWORK!

Saturday January 24, 2004 2:00pm - Monday February 2, 2004 8:00amInternetadmin

NOTE: Lacking a better description, for OUR purposes we are calling this virus episode the EMU SATURDAY VIRUS. It is a member of or variant in the Agobot family of viruses.

Residence Hall wall jacks for the students listed below have been disconnected because it is strongly suspected these computers have a virus that is flooding the EMU network and firewall with thousands of invalid data packets.

These computers need to be fixed before the room connections for them are turned on. students need to get the CD and instructions from the HelpDesk in the Campus Center. Instructions on a sheet of paper that accompanies the CD.

By carefully following the instructions for using the CD, the computer will be fixed and the student must then call the HelpDesk to have the network connection re-enabled. If, for some reason, the student computer again begins to flood the network Info Systems will disable the connection and notify the student to bring the computer to the HelpDesk for further work.

As the list below is updated the reconnected computers will be removed from this list. Computers shown on this list are disconnected as of the update time at the top of the list.

Students whose computers remain disconnected as of Tuesday, 1/29, 08:45
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STUDENTS: IF YOUR NAME AND/OR WALL JACK IS ON THE LIST ABOVE — DO NOT ATTEMPT TO MOVE YOUR COMPUTER TO A DIFFERENT WALL JACK. YOUR COMPUTER HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED AS ONE THAT IS TAKING DOWN THE NETWORK! IF YOU HAVE ALREADY MOVED IT — PLEASE UNPLUG IT IMMEDIATELY!!

Problems with Internet Connection – Again at 11:00am, Sat, 1/24

Saturday January 24, 2004 11:00am - 4:00pmInternetadmin

Problems similar to those that began around 11:00pm, Fri 1/23, seem to have returned.

Info Systems brought a network administrator to campus at noon and began debugging the problem. At about 1:15pm it was determined that the problem is caused by a number of computers in the Residence Halls flooding the network with data that is recognized by the firewall to be “problem connections”. The firewall then started to deny these connections but the volume is too great for it to deal with, its memory filled up and inconsistent network behavior developed in many areas.

At 1:15pm the network administrators shutdown all network connectivity going into and out of the entire Residence Hall network segment. We will try to isolate the computers that are causing the problem to see if we can restore network connectivity for the rest of the Residence Hall connections. This may take several hours.

A number of odd characteristics have been observed on the network during the past week, beginning with the extreme slowdown last Monday evening (1/19) that lasted about 4 hours. Another observation that Info Systems made on Thursday and Friday was that a number of computers in the Residence Hall network segment were transmitting packets of unusual data that looked somewhat like a virus. One of these computers was brought into the HelpDesk area and examined by technicians to see if the virus could be identified. A scan of that system revealed no identifiable virus but an unusual fileset was found. However, tech support did submit a notification to Sophos, asking them to comment on the findings. As of 1:00pm today (1/24) no response has been received from Sophos.

As of 2:00pm (1/24) we believe that there are a number of computers on the Residence Hall LAN segment that have something on them that is sending lots of “bad data” to the network that is choking the firewall.

By 4:00pm the problem computers were identified and their connections to the network were disabled. Info Systems will work with these students on Mon, 1/26, to find a solution to clean their computers and re-enable their network connections.

Extreme Network Slowdown for 1 to 2 Hours, Sat, 1/24

Saturday January 24, 2004 9:00am - 10:15amInternetadmin

About 9:15am, Sat, 1/24, Info Systems became aware that the EMU Internet connection was very slow, or non-existent. There were other anomalies such as problems accessing DNS servers, web server and ftp servers. Ping commands worked for some hosts and not others. No web pages could be accessed from off campus and accessing them from on-campus computers was very slow.

Diagnostic procedures lead to a possible problem with the EMU firewall. The device was rebooted about 10:10am and all network services appeared to begin to function normally.

Internet Connection Reconfiguration

Tuesday January 20, 2004 3:00pm - 5:00pmInternetadmin

A new type of Internet connection will become available to EMU that will provide more flexibility in meeting future Internet connectivity needs. This new service will require some downtime for the Internet connection to EMU.

An outside consultant will assist with this operation. Coordination will be required with our current Internet provider, nTelos.

We anticipate that about an hour of interuption will be required, however, there may be lingering affects that will require up to several hours until the up-stream DNS servers learn of this new type of connection. However, no email message should be lost, only delayed.

Systems Affected include: Internet connection, email, off-campus access to web systems on-campus (i.e. Blackboard, Campus Web, WebMail). All on-campus access to these web systems will NOT be affected.

Internet Connection is Slow or Non-Existent

Monday January 19, 2004 4:35pm - 9:00pmInternetadmin

About 4:35pm today (Mon, 1/19) EMU began experiencing slow Internet response times. The situation continues to worsen.

Info Systems is aware of the problem and is attempting to identify the cause. There is no projected time for resolution of the problem.

At the present time you may or may not be able to access off-campus web pages.
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Investigation revealed that there was an unusually high number of TCP packets being both sent to and being received from the Internet connection (i.e. nearly 3X normal rate both in and out). This info was obtained from discussions with an ISP engineer. Total bandwidth, however, was within reasonable range. The only way to debug further was by use of advanced diagnostic equipment which was not easily available at the time.

About 9pm performance returned to near normal conditions without explanation.

IS Outages

Check back for updates to any EMU-IS outages!