Internet outage –
A problem with the Ntelos network caused the problem. At 7:20 they had no estimate of when the outage would be resolved.
Category Archives: Internet
Residence Hall Internet Poor Performance Issue
A new piece of hardware was placed into production last week that seems to be creating a problem with performance for students in Residence Halls connecting to the Internet. Info Systems verified the problem late today (Wed, 10/27) and will be working to diagnose the problem on Thu, 10/28. We apologize for the inconvenience.
——————————
Problem found in the new NetEnforcer configuration file. Fixed by 9:00am, 10/28/04.
Internet VPN Network Implementation October 22,25,26
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 VPN Network Implementation October 22,25,26
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
There was a disruption in service due to an nTelos router problem.
Inserv1 outage
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
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
Unexpected internet outage, outside of campus.
Due to internet provider
STUDENT COMPUTERS DISCONNECTED TO SAVE THE NETWORK!
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
———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–
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
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.