At about 9:25AM this morning, the Beethoven distribution centre was disconnected from the University's network. This caused a network outage for all buildings on St Peters campus (Allan Web hall, Education, Law, Fine Art Annexe, Bangor house, St Peter's building, Beethoven house, Salisbury house, Cantebury house, Truro house, Winchester house, Elennor Brown house, Tryall cottage) as well as Eden Grove and Alumni house. Additionally, those areas using IP telephones in the vicinity of St Peters (mainly Environmental Education and Alumni house) will have had telephone services interrupted.
Our initial assessment revealed that the likely cause was a break in the fibre optic cable caused by the construction work in the vicinity of Alumni house as there's clear evidence of fresh damage to our underground sleeving.
We prioritised restoring services over finding the root cause, and managed to re-route connectivity to Beethoven house via an alternative, undamaged fibre optic cable by 10:20AM. This will have restored service to all affected buildings bar Truro house and Eden Grove. We're still trying to find an alternative route from the Beethoven house distribution centre to these areas.
Users in the affected areas may need to reboot their computers once connectivity is restored in order to re-gain access to the University's network.
Once all areas have been reconnected, we'll investigate further to ascertain exactly what happened and the extent of the damage.