noticeboard.ru.ac.za

Eskom's load shedding will have noticeable impact on the University's ICT infrastructure (networking, telephones, etc).

You are encouraged to FREQUENTLY SAVE YOUR WORK (especially immediately prior to a scheduled load shedding period) and MAKE REGULAR BACKUPS of all important documents and e-mail.

All central services (e-mail, Novell servers, etc) are located in the University's two main data centres. Both these data centres have stand-by generators and should remain unaffected by Eskom's load shedding. This means that the University maintains it's external presence on the Internet irrespective of whether there's power in Grahamstown.

Most of the University's telephone system has battery backup capacity capable of sustaining it through the two hour load shedding period. The exception to this is the Eden Grove building, which currently has around ten minutes of battery backup. Those areas of campus with IP telephones (Alumni House, Bangor house, CSD, Estates HQ, Grounds & Gardens, Student Union building) are dependant on both networking and power, and will thus be unreachable during power outages. If you try to phone a telephone that has no power, you will receive an out-of-service tone.

When power fails, computers and network switches in individual buildings around campus will go off. This will cause a widespread network outage on campus, even for people who have laptops that are powered by battery.

When power is restored, the network infrastructure on most parts of campus will recover automatically. You may find that you need to wait ten to fifteen minutes after power is restored before networking is restored. If you cannot access the network once power comes back, WAIT FIFTEEN MINUTES and then reboot your computer.

On occasion, our network switches do not recover gracefully from power failures. In these instances manual intervention is needed to restore networking. Our monitoring system will detect such problems, and will automatically notify the relevant people. Please DO NOT CONTACT US about network outages affecting whole buildings; we'll restore your networking as soon as possible.

When load shedding is scheduled to end after hours, any resulting faults will only be attend to DURING THE COURSE OF THE NEXT WORKING DAY. This means Tuesday and Thursday morning respectively for the scheduled load shedding on Monday and Wednesday evenings, and Monday morning for the scheduled load shedding on Friday evenings and Saturday & Sunday mornings.

The voicemail system's UPS will keep it up for half an hour to forty-five minutes.


Please be aware that we generally prioritize faults affecting the academic and administrative portions of our network over faults in student residences. As such, it may take longer for faults in residences to be attended to. Occasionally it may take more than a working day.


Please see http://www.ru.ac.za/administrative/it/gene...afterhours.html for more information about how we handle faults after hours.

One thing that's often a problem when attending to network faults, even during normal University office hours, is access to the various buildings on campus. We often find it incredibly difficult to obtain keys to buildings, or find people who are willing and able to let our technicians in. If an outage is particularly prolonged, it is highly likely that this is the cause.

The network infrastructure in Struben building, the Africa Media Matrix, and the Barratt lecture complex is supplied by redundant power that should sustain it through load shedding. The wireless network in the vicinity of these three buildings will continue to operate, even during load shedding periods. People with laptops who wish to make use of the University's network during a load shedding period are welcome to relocate to one of these three venues and connect wirelessly.

Unfortunately it appears that the load shedding outages are, on occasion, causing physical damage to our network infrastructure. In these instances, faults take somewhat longer to repair as we have to source and install spare parts.

The power outages are also heavily impacting our network team's resources, both in terms of staff availability and in terms of spares we carry on site. Whilst we will endeavour to attend to faults as soon as possible, please be aware that it takes us a fair amount of time to reach all areas of campus. In some instances, faults as a result of Monday's outage have not been resolved before Wednesdays; this will compound the problem.

Out network installation schedule has also been seriously impacted by these outages. Staff who would normally be involved in new installations are now spending a significant amount of time repairing faults. We are currently several weeks behind our schedule as a result of the recent outages. Please bear this in mind and be patient if you are waiting for new installations.

During the course of this morning we installed a UPS into the network room in Eden Grove. This UPS was ordered before load shedding began, so doesn't have the battery capacity to sustain it through the entire two hour load shedding period. It will, however, keep both the wired and wireless network in the Eden Grove building operational for the first hour or so of any power outage.

Eden Grove has a large exhibition space, seminar rooms, a computer lab, etc and so provides ample space for people with laptops to make use of the network.