IU Notify crashes, coding under repair

When the IU Credit Union robbery alert went out over IU Notify Friday night, the website crashed, potentially leaving thousands in the dark about what happened and what to do.
 
The coding language used for the web address, protect.iu.edu, doesn’t support high traffic to the site when an alert is made, said Mark Bruhn, associate vice president for public safety and institutional assurance.
 
“When there’s that many visitors trying to access the site, the language just can’t support it, and the site starts discarding connections,” Bruhn said.

The robbery occurred at about 6 p.m. Friday, and IU Notify posted the alert right before 9 p.m.

Soon after, traffic to the site was too heavy.

Many complained the site would not load.

“I got on twice during peak times, and the site loaded for me, but it was very slow,” Bruhn said.

Bruhn attributed the lag in part to another robbery alert that went out around the same time for the IUPUI campus.

“That definitely didn’t help,” he said. “But the main problem is still the coding.”

Bruhn said programmers first noticed a significant problem with the system when they made the alert about the Tulip Tree stabbing last October.

He said staff was hired in early December to fix the problem.

“It should take about three months to fully rewrite the code,” he said.

— Ashley Jenkins