WU Internet will be shutting down at midnight tonight

Washburn’s Internet connection will be down starting at midnight tonight. Information Technology Services has been troubleshooting a problem with the network since Sunday, and is shutting down campus Internet services in order to fix it. 

“I’m really frustrated with it,” said Madison Powers, sophomore history major. “It’s been affecting my schoolwork.”

According to a campus-wide email sent out early Tuesday afternoon, there is no exact time estimate regarding how long Internet services will be down. Service hopefully will only be interrupted for 15 minutes, but “additional time may be required.”

“Any website connected to the network with a login session, like MyWashburn accounts or Angel, will be interrupted,” said Kevin Halgren, assistant director of ITS. “Make sure to save your work frequently.”

The network has been going down due to the various incompatibilities that resulted from a recent system upgrade. Because the specific incompatibility error is “invisible,” the system must be shut down, and ITS must manually search and test for the problem. According to Halgren, the problem has been isolated, but never sounded any alarms to begin with.

“It wouldn’t completely break the connection, it would just hault it,” said Halgren. “When people returned from Spring Break, the increase in traffic made the problem much more noticeable.” 

The faulty connection was to blame for stopping Airbods Radio shows on Monday and Tuesday. Airbods Radio relies on a stable connection in order to broadcast their programs online.

“We lose our audience, it disrupts our consistent programming,” said Kara Protasio, Airbods radio coordinator. “We couldn’t broadcast our show in the Union Market because the Internet wasn’t working there either.”

People began calling ITS early on Monday, reporting issues with the connection. According to Halgren, the amount of calls received in a short time is what alerted ITS.

“If you find a problem with the network, report it to us,” said Halgren. “It’s been a difficult problem to troubleshoot.”