No Internet Until Tuesday?

Ginge Young

So as I'm sure most people are aware there is no internet in UL (unless it has been fixed in the time it's taken me to travel into a friends house in the city).

This means no internet in the library, labs, or any of the villages. Timetables are down, SULIS, and the library website.

It was down last night around 1am and the night before too (dunno if others would have noticed that). Anyway, I contacted reception in the main building to see if there was in fact someone from ITD on standby to sort this out.

The reply I got was basically, well it was gone the last two nights and came back, so hopefully it will again, otherwise it won't be fixed till Tuesday because no one from ITD is in fact on standby......

I'm not a computer person, so I don't know the details of what could actually be done etc, but can I just said that just because it is a "holiday" weekend does not mean people don't have work or studying to do.

If it so happens that the problem remains unfixed until Tuesday it's a bit of a disgrace.

TwilightFan88

Ah you actually serious?

They won't fix it till the Tuesday of STUDY WEEK!?

UL IT are a joke!

They must of sercured their jobs via the co-op office they are that bad some times!

silverspoon

Oh God, this is absolutely fcuking me over. Right in the middle of writing essays, due on Friday. No fcuking article database. Seriously panicking here...

mulner92

Why does sulis have to act funny when our sociology marks are meant to be due? Probably have to wait till Tuesday now.

thelikelylad

You can view the status of the UL network here...

http://www.hea.net/mrtg/ul2.html

Ya it seems to have been down Thursday night aswell.

MrFoxman360

Have internet here in Dromroe village anyway, just came back!

seanman is me

thelikelylad wrote: »

You can view the status of the UL network here...

http://www.hea.net/mrtg/ul2.html

Ya it seems to have been down Thursday night aswell.

good work man!!!!!!!!!!!

cson

Its an absolute ****ing disgrace and nothing short of it. I'm at home now because I couldn't take the chance that it wouldn't come back over the weekend.

Between this and the short loans being closed til Tuesday... There are some things I'm going to miss after I finish here this May and some things I won't.

Funkstard

It's absolutely ****ing insane, been working late all week and it's gone on cue every night. It was gone all of today and only randomly came back tonight, who knows how it will fare over the weekend.

No problems spending €3 million on the presidents house but they can't get basic education requirements functioning properly!

ITD has been a joke for all of my time in UL, totally stuck in the past and the infrastructure is constantly up and down.

mulner92

I'm not really using those computers unless i have to. Found the last few weeks, particularly in the venus labs that the browser froze or got very slow. I wish our sociology lecturer never mentioned she was giving back essays now, its going to be a long wait till tuesday.

Seloth

Last years budget cut IT to zero :mad:

JoseJones

This is so frustrating. I was in the middle of an online test for a job, just about to click the submit button when it went :mad:. I didn't get to email them until tonight to explain what happened so they won't get it until Tuesday.

I was so pissed off earlier, kinda calmed down now but it's an absolute joke. I heard somewhere that most of castletroy had internet problems but I highly doubt that tbh.

wnolan1992

You'd think they could make a bit of an effort to fix the damn thing before tuesday.

Was gone all day today, which would be fine, if I didn't need to download A BOLLOCK LOAD OF SLIDES from the CSIS website. >:(

I wonder have they heard there's exams on in a weeks time? Maybe someone should email them? Oh wait, just as I'm about to hit send, Dromroe'll probably go all medieval on my ass.

ninty9er

If you think that this is appalling then I have news for you all. Your excpectations are unrealistic.

It's something you are going to have to come to terms with in the real world. The University goes to great lengths to ensure students have nothing to complain about, and when they or we complain there's generally an immediate solution or a move towards one.

If this happened at 12pm on Thursday there wouldn't be an issue, it's outside of service hours, is extremely unfortunate and I'm sure Aoife will be dealing with it on Tuesday to avoid a repeat, but a dose of reality is needed in this thread.

cson

To be fair Derek, it's happened on a continual basis this week - that's wholly unacceptable imo. I can deal with the network being down once every so often as things like that can happen but given the week thats in it and the fact it's happened a number of times now, there should be a fire lit under ITD's arse to ensure it doesn't happen again. We shouldn't accept that such occurances represent the status quo - the ah sure it'll be grand attitude that pervades much of Irish society isn't acceptable. I mean the fact that if it hadn't come back [as I understand it has] it would have been Tuesday before anything would have been done is frankly embarrassing. That's 5 days without access to resources for students who are studying for exams. Even simple things like searching the library catalogue for a book would be inaccessible. We want to see ourselves as a secular society yet its fine to take the benefits religion brings when it suits you, such as a 4 day weekend.

cup of tea

Using the if it happened before thursday excuse doesn't hold imo. It happended about 2 weeks ago too. I'm sure if UL wanted they could have got a technician today to fix it.

Sid_Justice

ninty9er wrote: »

If you think that this is appalling then I have news for you all. Your excpectations are unrealistic.

It's something you are going to have to come to terms with in the real world. The University goes to great lengths to ensure students have nothing to complain about, and when they or we complain there's generally an immediate solution or a move towards one.

If this happened at 12pm on Thursday there wouldn't be an issue, it's outside of service hours, is extremely unfortunate and I'm sure Aoife will be dealing with it on Tuesday to avoid a repeat, but a dose of reality is needed in this thread.

What? Are you actually serious?

My expectations are not unrealistic. UL should have active, reliable internet access for all campus buildings and personnel 24/7 365 days a year. Anything less is unacceptable.

Yes there are problems occasionally with infrastructure. Maybe it's beyond the control of the University due to it being a supply from HEANET or some granny with a pick and a spade chopped the cable in half.

If the problem is tricky to fix, the relevant authority should be emailing (yes i do see the irony in this) all students and staff and telling them this is what's happening, this is what we're doing to fix it, this is the expect time span.

Someone telling me, sorry it's a bankholiday all our worker bees are out of office til Tuesday is ridiculous and insulting.

I think you're the one who needs a dose of reality. If you worked in a company that had 10000 people in it and the internet went down there would be massive effort made to return it.

Bringing in things about sunny weather, the weekend, bankholidays, out of office hours is laughable and pathetic and makes the college look amateur.

EDIT: If I had any idea this what your attitude was I would never have voted for you.

wnolan1992

Sid_Justice wrote: »

What? Are you actually serious?

If the problem is tricky to fix, the relevant authority should be emailing (yes i do see the irony in this) all students and staff and telling them this is what's happening, this is what we're doing to fix it, this is the expect time span.
.

Damn right. We've had no information about the problem at all. And people keep saying, "oh well it did happen on thursday..." well what about Friday? Why the hell weren't there people fixing the f_cking problem yesterday when it was down for the entire day??

Granted it seems to be back now...(starts slamming every bit of wood in the vicinity), but is just through dumb luck, or did they actually fix the issue? and can we expect it to fail miserably again?

hi_im_fil

ninty9er wrote: »

If you think that this is appalling then I have news for you all. Your excpectations are unrealistic.

It's something you are going to have to come to terms with in the real world. The University goes to great lengths to ensure students have nothing to complain about, and when they or we complain there's generally an immediate solution or a move towards one.

If this happened at 12pm on Thursday there wouldn't be an issue, it's outside of service hours, is extremely unfortunate and I'm sure Aoife will be dealing with it on Tuesday to avoid a repeat, but a dose of reality is needed in this thread.

I'm sorry, thats bs. Its unrealistic to expect the University's SULIS system and the database where lecture notes are stored to not go down for days at a time? Its a disgrace that it can happen. How are students meant to do work when we can't get a reliable IT service to access information at a crucial time like this?

Don't get me started on the whole system crashing EVERY year when students try to acceess their exam results! The fact of the matter is the IT service in UL is disgraceful, servers crash the whole time at crucial times during the year (has happened every year for the past 5 years) and nothing seems to have been to to improve the service.

cup of tea

ninty9er wrote: »

If you think that this is appalling then I have news for you all. Your excpectations are unrealistic.

It's something you are going to have to come to terms with in the real world. The University goes to great lengths to ensure students have nothing to complain about, and when they or we complain there's generally an immediate solution or a move towards one.

If this happened at 12pm on Thursday there wouldn't be an issue, it's outside of service hours, is extremely unfortunate and I'm sure Aoife will be dealing with it on Tuesday to avoid a repeat, but a dose of reality is needed in this thread.

our expectations are unrealistic??....It is probably one of the most reasonable expectations one can have in college that there is a reasonable internet system in place. A dose of reality is needed?. The reality is that the internet system along with the server when resusts come out are a joke. I think you are the one that needs a dose of reality. If i knew this was your attitude I would definitely have voted differently.

SarahBeep!

hi_im_fil wrote: »

I'm sorry, thats bs. Its unrealistic to expect the University's SULIS system and the database where lecture notes are stored to not go down for days at a time? Its a disgrace that it can happen. How are students meant to do work when we can't get a reliable IT service to access information at a crucial time like this?

Don't get me started on the whole system crashing EVERY year when students try to acceess their exam results! The fact of the matter is the IT service in UL is disgraceful, servers crash the whole time at crucial times during the year (has happened every year for the past 5 years) and nothing seems to have been to to improve the service.

If you KNOW Sulis os going to crash....why not download your notes as they are put up (throughout the semester), some of us learned that trick after first semester of first year :rolleyes:

Not saying that the no internet situation is forgivable because it's not, but perhaps there are steps you could have taken to avoid being left without notes?

Seloth

Guys sorry but I'm finding it laughable so many of you are saying you wouldn't of voted for Derek if you knew he'd post that.Are you old granny's who's wouldn't vote for a TD as they said one thing(That has nothing to do with their policy's or the larger part of their personal views)No your not so stop trying to cause drama out of nothing,Your not a tabloid news paper for petes sake:pac:

Look I'm as pissed as anyone about this,but you do have to realize as well that most staff are probably off during the weekend,and this being easter weekend it is expected(To be off,not a system crash).As one person said,this wouldn't happen with a company,well yes it would actually as there would be a lack of staff on weekends,as well and especially holidays.Now to my knowledge Sulis has been back up since yesterday so that is pretty good as I doubt much IT staff if any were in Friday.

Look it shouldn't of happened,but it has and is now fixed.Hostilities if any should be towards the University,not the Student Representative who will voice the concern of the student population to the Uni.

hi_im_fil

SarahBeep! wrote: »

If you KNOW Sulis os going to crash....why not download your notes as they are put up (throughout the semester), some of us learned that trick after first semester of first year :rolleyes:

Not saying that the no internet situation is forgivable because it's not, but perhaps there are steps you could have taken to avoid being left without notes?

I probably should have downloaded them before, thats a fair point. But its unreasonable to expect students to download all their notes incase a server goes down for days.

SarahBeep!

hi_im_fil wrote: »

I probably should have downloaded them before, thats a fair point. But its unreasonable to expect students to download all their notes incase a server goes down for days.

Is it unreasonable to ask students to HAVE their notes before study week?

hi_im_fil

If notes are supposed to be accessible through SULIS or the sharepoint site, then i dont see the need to expect students to download gigabytes of notes/tut files so the University can just say "why didn't you download them before?"

thats not gone well

If notes are supposed to be accessible through SULIS or the sharepoint site, then i dont see the need to expect students to download gigabytes of notes/tut files so the University can just say "why didn't you download them before?"

its called having a back up plan;)
I highly doubt when writing reports/essays/other college work, you only have one copy in fairness.

Technically they are accessible; however the quality of access is questionable.
If a resource is proving unreliable and problematic, and you, the student, knowing about said issue,
fail to do anything about it throughout the semester, then while the IT issue is a joke, the blame rests primarily with you.

The IT problem is a known issue, so you can assume it’ll continue to crash.
Therefore I don’t see why, when knowing how temper mental it is, you left everything to the last minute.

NTMK

ninty9er wrote: »

If you think that this is appalling then I have news for you all. Your excpectations are unrealistic.

It's something you are going to have to come to terms with in the real world. The University goes to great lengths to ensure students have nothing to complain about, and when they or we complain there's generally an immediate solution or a move towards one.

If this happened at 12pm on Thursday there wouldn't be an issue, it's outside of service hours, is extremely unfortunate and I'm sure Aoife will be dealing with it on Tuesday to avoid a repeat, but a dose of reality is needed in this thread.

So its unrealistic to expect a fully functioning internet service :rolleyes:
I guarantee you that UPC or Eircom wouldn't have a 5 day wait the fact that this outage seems to happen every year just shows how incompetent the ITD department is.

SarahBeep!

NTMK wrote: »

the fact that this outage seems to happen every year just shows how incompetent the ITD department is.

--NEWSFLASH--

Derek Daly doesn't work for ITD so I wouldn't nail him to the cross just yet.

ninty9er

NTMK wrote: »

So its unrealistic to expect a fully functioning internet service :rolleyes:
I guarantee you that UPC or Eircom wouldn't have a 5 day wait the fact that this outage seems to happen every year just shows how incompetent the ITD department is.

You've obviously never dealt with UPC.

I didn't say it's acceptable for the network to cease functioning, because it's not, but it's not realistic to expect it to be fixed over a weekend period on a Bank Holiday.

The problems with SULIS have, to my knowledge, been raised by Aoife with ITD and others, in relation to more than just operating, but actual functionality of they system.

If you wouldn't have voted for me for telling you an unwelcome home truth, that's really a matter for yourself, but being offensive and obnoxious isn't going to resolve the issues with the network.

Robo_Mike

NTMK wrote: »

So its unrealistic to expect a fully functioning internet service :rolleyes:
I guarantee you that UPC or Eircom wouldn't have a 5 day wait the fact that this outage seems to happen every year just shows how incompetent the ITD department is.

We waited 2 weeks for UPC to fix our connection during the summer.... Anyway, thats a tad OT...

To be fair, it can be very hard to have a 100% reliable system, and definitely very costly to do so. The university are making budget cuts everywhere, while doing their best to preserve the student experience. As some other poster mentioned, ITDs budget has probably been cut to almost nothing...

On a broader note, i do believe the internet connection in the university is very good, but could do with better wireless coverage. To expect a system that will stay online all the time is unrealistic. Its just a case of very bad luck that the time the system decided to go offline is this close to exams, and a bank holiday weekend. However it is unforgivable that the system does fail on results day. ITD know that there is going to be pressure on the system, and should be able to fix it.

Seloth

NTMK wrote: »

So its unrealistic to expect a fully functioning internet service :rolleyes:
I guarantee you that UPC or Eircom wouldn't have a 5 day wait the fact that this outage seems to happen every year just shows how incompetent the ITD department is.

Thats actually the best post I've ever seen on Boards...I dunno about UPC but Eircom...LULZ

Dude For three years myself and my neighbors at home had our internet connect at random periods of time (With a strong broadband connection apparently)And when it did "Connect" it was for periods of 3-50 mins.

At one period it wasnt on for 3 months.Infact last year alone during my LC I didnt have the internet for a month(which I needed it for).

Jaysus you really do have an unrealistic view.Although I dont have UPC And I said "I dont know"about them above friends of mine are on it and they dont say great things either.

Uls broadband is fanuckingtasic compared to my home Eircom one.

Sid_Justice

Holy crow Seloth would you get a grip. Do you understand how mad your analogy is. You're comparing the loss of your local dsl/cable broadband to your house hold in some little estate to the complete loss of internet connection to an entire university. There are hundreds of access points with 1000s of of connections at peak times and 100s at off-peak times.

If I was to compare the loss of water to just my house in limerick to the entire loss of water to the entire campus in UL would you able to envision how different these things are in terms of magnitude?

If you wouldn't have voted for me for telling you an unwelcome home truth, that's really a matter for yourself, but being offensive and obnoxious isn't going to resolve the issues with the network.

Was that directed at me? If your home truth is that students should just take what their given and be grateful then I am sorry, your attitude leaves a lot to be desired. Even using UPC in the same breath as this problem demonstrates your clear lack of understanding of the issue.

Thanksfully the problem seems to have resolved , whether it did by its own accord or some poor/lucky sod from ITN came it for some overtime who knows. The su chap doesn't seem to cos he's on his easter holidays.

Seloth

Sid_Justice wrote: »

Holy crow Seloth would you get a grip. Do you understand how mad your analogy is. You're comparing the loss of your local dsl/cable broadband to your house hold in some little estate to the complete loss of internet connection to an entire university. There are hundreds of access points with 1000s of of connections at peak times and 100s at off-peak times.

If I was to compare the loss of water to just my house in limerick to the entire loss of water to the entire campus in UL would you able to envision how different these things are in terms of magnitude?

Lol dude I live 4 miles outside a town but this problem affected 4000 households,Now if you read the post a person stated how UPC and Eircom were reliable compared to the UL campus one and how this wouldnt happen on their connection.That is why I posted the Lulz and gave example :L.

Was that directed at me? If your home truth is that students should just take what their given and be grateful then I am sorry, your attitude leaves a lot to be desired

Sorry for jumping into another conversation but dude,In general thats the life of a student.Don't get me wrong I think we should get a far high quality of service(Which is one of the arguments for those on the Pro fee's side)but as I jsut said that is student life.

Ginge Young

ninty9er wrote: »

You've obviously never dealt with UPC.

I didn't say it's acceptable for the network to cease functioning, because it's not, but it's not realistic to expect it to be fixed over a weekend period on a Bank Holiday.

The problems with SULIS have, to my knowledge, been raised by Aoife with ITD and others, in relation to more than just operating, but actual functionality of they system.

If you wouldn't have voted for me for telling you an unwelcome home truth, that's really a matter for yourself, but being offensive and obnoxious isn't going to resolve the issues with the network.

Derek with all due respect,

It is acceptable to not have someone working over the bank holiday weekend as part of regular timetabled hours, but it is NOT acceptable for there to be no one on standby should the ENTIRE system go down.

I know you've been out of the student life for a while, but the weekend of reading week, when people have assignments due that week, or are studying or are doing any work in fact, when the ENTIRE NETWORK goes down, there should be someone on standby to come and fix it.

It is not acceptable for a campus of 12,000 (regardless of how many are actually here on weekends like that), to not have a system in place for someone to come in and fix the network if it ever goes down for a sustained period of time like it did this past weekend.

I cannot possibly see how it is unrealistic to have someone on standby if this happens, in particular if it is the case that it could be down for a total of 4 days.

Peteee

Guys calm down.

sceptre

I realise that the network came back up over the weekend. Here's a personal view anyway as, rants aside, it's worthy of a discussion.

Late in the term, it isn't acceptable to have the network down for anything resembling a prolonged period. Apart from people needing access to notes on the network (which could be backed up but some courses have a staggering amount of notes data on the network), people living in the student villages depend on the network for internet access. Late in the term, with essays due (while I recognise that there are restrictions on how late in the term essays can be assigned without the consent of the class, most classes tend to consent to deadlines whenever they're set as people are disinclined to annoy the lecturers who will be marking their final exams) this access is extremely important.

No-one expects ITD to have someone working all weekend in case something happens. That would be a waste of financial resources. However, it's entirely reasonable to expect someone to be on standby in case something happens. That's a good use of financial resources. While deadlines can be moved as a result of the network being unavailable, that's at the behest of the lecturer and some will be more reasonable about it than others. Additionally, late in term, many students will have a study plan laid out and messing with that as a result of network resources being unavailable to them for a day or two isn't particularly fair.

Common sense (ie having someone on standby over the long weekend) isn't entirely free. It will cost some money to have someone on standby. But with a large number of people depending on the UL network being available and usable, it's a small amount of money to spend on ensuring that if the network goes down, it's likely to be down for only a few hours. The trouble with common sense, of course, is that it isn't particularly common. While the yearlong average of uptime is important, having all of the downtime in one weekend (even assuming it to be limited to one weekend) so close to the exams isn't particularly impressive. It's an entirely reasonable thing to complain about it. Common sense would dictate that people should complain about it.

Oh, and comparing the quality of service (including repair time) for a home broadband connection with that of the UL-HEA connection is nuts.