Yet another apology for network issues came via email on Thursday when problems with school computers arose once again. “We are experiencing a series of separate issues with a variety of causes,” John R. Ellis, executive director of Information Technology Services said.
Several network shutdowns have occurred in the past few weeks including issues with the College’s Wi-Fi. Each time it takes about three hours to bring all systems back up, the email said. “Then we usually have lingering issues for several days or more,” Ellis added.
Increased network bandwidth cost the school $13,000. The College said that Netflix, Youtube were the reasons behind the problems. “It is interesting to note that Netflix and Youtube usage consume about half of internet bandwidth,” Ellis said in the email.
The email also noted that in September the College was the target of distributed denial-of-service attacks from an outside entity. The Banner and Cisco systems have also been experiencing troubles.
There have been additional issues with Time Warner Cable regarding televisions on campus as well, to which the company was only “fairly responsive” according to Ellis. “We understand that the expectation of students is to resolve issue much more quickly,” he added.
The College did admit blame for one issue, the Nov. 4 network core switch incident.
Ellis said that instead of just throwing money at the problems, the College plans to provide an appropriate level of service without incurring unreasonable costs for the school.
