Technology gremlins identified throughout the campus network infrastructure – Update Wed, Sept 4

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This is a general notice that a number of technology anomalies causing disruption have been occurring throughout Denison’s network infrastructure (and beyond) since the start of the semester. IT staff, in conjunction with several outside consultants, continue to work around the clock to bring stability and expected performance to all systems and services. Instability and poor performance with a variety of services is not wide spread or consistent across the campus areas but the incoming Trouble Call volume of the Help Desk is steady. Technicians are resolving problems as quickly as possible. Electronic classroom technology issues will be resolved as a first priority, followed by faculty, staff, and student wireless connectivity reported issues.  If you have any problem associated with connecting to the network, wired or wireless, please report it to the ITS Help Desk immediately at 740.587.6395 or helpdesk@denison.edu

Pending and resolved issues:

  • Blackboard performance (slow): Believed to be largely resolved; intermittent slowness was experienced over the past week. This was primarily experienced by those on-campus but reports also were taken of slowness when connecting off-campus. There was a problem with our Internet connection as reported by Oarnet, occuring through Wed afternoon, that may have contributed to the problem. The Blackboard platform is hosted by the University of Cincinnati.  It was upgraded to a new version during the summer.
  • Internet performance (slow or unavailable): Believe to be resolved; reports were individual (not wide spread) and sporadic; Denison’s ISP Oarnet identified an issue in the Ohio fiber ring and corrected; the holiday delayed the resolution.
  • Wireless (cannot connect or seemingly unavailable): Believed to be largely resolved although can re-occur; IT is monitoring affected areas closely. Affected approximately 30% of student residences and two academic buildings and Slayter. Meru access point radios are sporadically going off-line. IT has put in place a work-around to re-connect radios while awaiting a permanent fix from the manufacturer. Radios may continue to experience interruption.

  • Connection to Internet or U: and S: drives impeded (user gets an “unable to connect to server” message): Not resolved; IT is actively working on this problem with the core infrastructure vendor support. Diagnosis has been tedious but a fix is on the horizon!  Progress continues.  If reported to the help desk, technicians are able to resolve for individual machines.  Please call if you have trouble.