noticeboard.ru.ac.za

2011/11/17 - Unscheduled Internet Outage
About ten minutes ago, Rhodes lost access to the Internet for reasons as yet unknown. From our initial diagnosis, it seems that the fault lies somewhere on Neotel's circuit between Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth, meaning Rhodes is the only site affected,

You will likely experience this outage as an ERR_DNS_FAIL or ERR_CONNECT_FAIL error when trying to access websites. When accessing secure (https://) web sites, your browser may report that the connection has timed out or the site is unreachable.

The problem has been reported to TENET's service desk.
I've just been in contact with TENET's service desk about this. Neotel suspect that the problem is a fibre break, but are still trying to isolate it. They've promised an update within half an hour.
Neotel have narrowed the problem down to the piece of fibre between their point of presence in North End, Port Elizabeth and the SANReN point of presence at NMMU South Campus. Neotel's technician in Port Elizabeth apparently now needs access to their equipment on NMMU's campus in order to localise the fault further. We're currently trying to arrange this with TENET & NMMU.

The matter has been escalated to Neotel's management.
Site access was arranged with NMMU some time ago, but I'm told that Neotel hasn't yet arrived on site at NMMU.

Neither TENET nor we quite understand why they actually need access to NMMU...
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