By
Shana Heiser
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Hardware, configuration problems to blame for disruption
The UA's Internet-access system shut down for nearly 12 hours yesterday, leaving thousands of students, faculty and staff locked out of cyberspace.
The system failed because of a breakdown in the main router that connects the university's ethernet system to the "outside world," said Manny Burruel, UA Network Control manager.
"The entire campus has been affected," Burruel said.
University of Arizona students, faculty and staff were affected by the network crash, which occurred at 6:10 a.m. yesterday.
"I'm upset I can't get into my stuff," said Michelle Seiple, a dance freshman. "I can't even get e-mails. I know my roommate is trying to talk to people back home and out of state, and we can't."
UA's Internet provider, Cisco Systems, sent representatives from Phoenix to fix the problem at about 3 p.m. yesterday, but the problem was not fixed until 5:30 p.m., making for a long day for workers at the Center for Computing and Information Technology's Network Control.
"I don't think anyone is going to go home for a while," Burruel said yesterday afternoon. "We're working with the manufacturers of the equipment trying to resolve the problem with this particular machine."
The dependence on the Internet was evident in computer labs, where a quarter of the students walked out, said Jay Wang, communication junior and lab monitor in the Engineering building.
"We see how much we rely on it, for class and research on the Internet," he said. "People without telnet accounts (need it)."
One UA student was waiting to hear if she was accepted into business school, but without the Internet, she left the computer lab disappointed.
"She's kind of antsy," said Laura Trame, a dance freshman and a lab monitor in the Engineering building. "She said the results are in for a lot of people."
At the Science and Engineering Library, most complaints came from students trying to check their e-mail through the Internet, but only the internal UA server was available.
Jeff Prock, UA librarian, said students have been "upset because we can't send e-mail outside, but nobody's been extremely upset."
Issues with journal databases have risen in the libraries as well, because the databases are all accessed via the Internet, said Prock.
Overall, the campus community is surviving without the Internet, but Trame said she hopes the network failure is only temporary.
"I think it would be a problem if it was down for more than one day, but a day isn't a problem," she said.
Burruel said he isn't sure if the disruption in Internet access was caused by configuration problems or if it was the result of broken hardware. He added that they would know today what caused the disruption.
