Internet down for three hours Wednesday
Rice’s Internet connection went down for about three hours Wednesday morning due to an off-campus malfunction. The problem was caused when Rice’s Internet service provider, Verio Inc., experienced a power outage at its Houston facility that caused the company’s network equipment to reset. Verio’s backup power supply did not work as it was supposed to, Assistant Director for Networking Long Pham said. Internet access stopped at 8:05 a.m., although Web sites on the Rice network, such as Webmail, were still accessible. Power was restored to Verio by 9 a.m., but the two main routers malfunctioned due to the outage. The routers would not exchange information, and Verio was forced to contact the manufacturer of the routers to fix the problem. Service was completely restored by 11:05 a.m., Pham said. ‘It’s something that’s unexpected, and we will try to look and talk with Verio to make sure it doesn’t happen again,’ he said. ‘I’m sure the rest of the corporations that have major accounts with Verio will be questioning that as well.’ Several updates on the situation were sent to students over some college listservs and provided on the Information Technology Web site. Jones College junior Leor Pantilat said the outage was an inconvenience. ‘I went around to other people’s computers because I had to find out if it was just my machine or if it affected everybody,’ Pantilat said. ‘It kind of sucks when you take something for granted and then it’s taken away from you. But I didn’t miss it that much.’ Verio will likely reassess its backup power system, Pham said. He said IT will investigate why the outage occurred and take steps to ensure that such a problem does not happen again, perhaps by adding another ISP. ‘We’re going to start looking at bringing in another ISP, either as a backup or to off-load some of the traffic just in case,’ Pham said. ‘It may be smaller, but better than nothing.’
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