At approximately 8.30 this morning the higher educational (HED) component of our outgoing Internet connection went down. A fault report was logged with Telkom's call center at about 8.55 and we were informed that the problem lay with the HED router at the University of Natal (UND).
At 12.30 a second call to Telkom revealed that the problem has been isolated to a faulty UPS circuit in UND's machine room, meaning that the HED router currently has no power. UND's electricians were contacted and they informed us that they are awaiting the arrival a service technician from the UPS manufacturer's agents in Durban. Unfortunately they could not give us an estimate of how long it is likely to be before service is restored. It is likely, however, that it'll take a while for routing to stabilise once power is restored, meaning that HED connections could be intermittent for a while once this happens.
This fault affects all traffic between higher educational facilities in South Africa (things that end in .ac.za). This includes the SEALS shared library service, which is currently not accessible from other participating institutions.