At approximately 6PM this evening, the University suffered a partial Internet access failure. The failure would have affected browsing and general Internet access on campus, but did not affect core services (including external access to email, RUConnected, etc).
Access to the IPv4 Internet was restored at about 7.20PM, and access to the IPv6 Internet was restored about 20 minutes later.
The failure was a result of multiple failures on the SANReN national backbone, most notably ones between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town; Port Elizabeth and East London; and Grahamstown and Bisho. These are all fibre services provided to Telkom, suggesting a more general problem on Telkom's network in the Eastern Cape.
Whilst service has been restored, the SANReN national backbone is currently extremely congested as a result of failures elsewhere. In addition, the SEACOM cable to Europe is currently inaccessible. This puts SANReN (and thus Rhodes) at risk of further failure, and means that some connections will be slow or unstable.