The System is Down

It’s happened to everybody on campus: students are on the Internet doing homework, checking grades, playing games or using social media when everything comes to a screeching halt and students are left cursing the inconsistent connection. During the first week of classes, students and faculty were both subjected to the terrors of having no Internet with which to work. Students may falsely, yet unwittingly, place blame at the feet of the IT professionals such as Steve Meadows, Director of Networking and Support Services at Concord University. So what really happened?

    To get a better understanding of what happened with the network being down, a basic understanding of how it works is essential; Meadows explains that central devices called “switches” that all the buildings connect to are hooked up via fiber optics to wiring racks in all buildings. Meadows described it as a “spoke on a wagon wheel”, where one inner mechanism is connected to an outer mechanism, which in this case would provide the Internet to anywhere students connect to on campus. However, during the first week of classes, there were multiple switch failures in the residence halls caused by overheating due to air conditioning failures as well as switch failures in other parts of campus for other various reasons such as all of Concord’s equipment being roughly the same age. This meant that essentially everywhere on campus was a dead zone for wireless Internet, and both students and teachers felt the effects of the network being down. However, Meadows states that this kind of problem reaches beyond the concern of students and faculty.

Steve Meadows, Director of Networking and Support Services 
Image courtesy of  
concord.edu

    “The network isn’t just responsible for providing you all Internet. TV cables, security system, HBAC all run over the network…we also have to worry about if campus police can monitor the security cameras for campus safety.” So the network of Concord University being down actually had far more outlying effects that Meadows and his staff had to get functioning again. However, there is a lighter side to this network being down, because now Meadows and the IT staff are researching new and more cost-effective ways to keep the network running.

    Meadows explains that switches and fiber optics from previous purchases were costing upwards of four to ten times more than what they are now. For example, Meadows presented two separate fiber optics plugs which were the same in form and function, but one cost $300 as opposed to the other costing $30. And these kinds of investments are not only happening in a monetary sense; Meadows also explained a new type of wall plate that would eventually replace the wall plates in every room of the residence halls which will provide the rooms with wi-fi directly, without the need for a router. Meadows states, “Woodell and Wilson, because of their construction, they’re all masonry, so it’s harder to get wi-fi through it. So, by putting it in the rooms, we’re investigating these to see if it’s a possible solution.”

    So what should students do if the network is down? “Unless it’s a complete campus shutdown,” says Meadows, “the Rahall building is always open, and this is the building with all the servers in it, so if you’re going to be able to access wi-fi anywhere, it will be in this building.” If students are not able to find a wireless Internet connection, the library offers several Ethernet ports which would provide a wired Internet connection without the need for wi-fi.

    “We appreciate [the students’] patience. We’re doing everything we can to fix everything as quick as possible. To my knowledge, everything is good in all buildings as far as Internet. We’ve identified that if you’re in one of the residence halls that you provide your own router, if you have one of the new Belkin routers, that their wizard has an issue and it needs to be manually setup as opposed to the wizard setup. What I’m going to do is get one of the Belkin’s in and sniff the activity to see how the wizard works.”