Failed router causes irksome network delays

Checking e-mail or registering for classes Wednesday was probably harder than most days. \nThe IU network was experiencing problems all day, which left many students and professors on campus frustrated and with more work than usual. In some cases, going back to manual and old- fashioned ways of communication was the only option. \nSenior Richard Kaler, who went to the computer lab in the Indiana Memorial Union, found some computers connected to the network and some wouldn't. \n"I am trying to print up an assignment for a class, and I'm pretty irritated," Kaler said. "It's taking me an extra 15 minutes to get this assignment, where normally I would print it. But now I have to transcribe it since I can't print."\nLucas Telecom Operations and Systems Director Michael Lucas said some of the problems encountered were caused by a router that failed, and late Wednesday engineers were still working to figure out what caused the problem.\n"The network in Bloomington was unstable today due to a failure in the primary campus core router, located at the (Wrubel Computing Center)," Lucas told the Indiana Daily Student in an e-mail. "Because these routers are very complex, the exact cause of the problem can take some time to diagnose. At this point the engineers do not know exactly what caused the failure … That process is underway now."\nLucas said workers transferred the network to another backup router located in the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, and this process contributed to the unstable network throughout the day. \nLucas said he will try to ensure this problem does not happen again.\n"But in the long term, the goal is to add additional routers into the design of the network to lessen the impact of a router failure," he said.\nAnother reason for the problem was a single router could not handle the amount of users on the network. \n"The amount of traffic on the network has continued to grow, and the demands on the network have been such that the single-router/single-backup design is no longer viable," Lucas said. "The engineers have been developing a new multi-router network design since last December, and the equipment to implement that design has been ordered."\nSara Williams, a lab consultant in the IMU computer lab, said many students encountered problems all day Wednesday, and there wasn't much she could do to help.\n"I've been here since 2 this afternoon, and students have been having problems from logging on to basically anything you can think of," Williams said. "Another problem was OneStart wouldn't work, which is the core of everything for students. So I've just been letting people know."\nWilliams also said some students have been more frustrated than others.\n"Some have been upset," she said. "There's been some cursing here and there."\nTransactions at the IU Bookstore in the IMU were also faced with problems and taking longer than usual. Bookstore employees freshman Libby Pfancuff and senior Jennifer Gurchiek said they were told to write everything down and to just do the best they could.\n"All the cash registers but one are down, so we're not completely debilitated," Pfancuff said. "But we have to take credit manually and actually use the swipe tool."\nStudents had to wait longer for transactions to go through since everything had to be done manually and employees had to use calculators.\n"It's frustrating because students don't get what they want as quickly as they usually can," Gurchiek said. \n-- Contact staff writer Lindsay Jancek at lmjancek@indiana.edu.