Spring Break
Effects of Internet outage felt throughout campus
Campus firewall was to blame
Paulo Hernandez, Daily Staff Writer
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A failure to the campus firewall made the Internet unavailable all day, he said.
All servers on campus were working. However the university was completely disconnected from the Internet. People were working to correct the situation all day, Judd said.
"Something like this should not happen very often at all," he said. "This is a highly unusual event."
The Internet could be out for about three to four hours every once in a while, but to lose it for an entire day is a very serious problem, Judd said.
The root of the problem was an incompatability between the hardware and the software the university network uses, he said.
"Everyone on campus was affected by Thursday's event," Judd said, "The entire campus could not connect with the outside and the outside couldn't connect with the campus."
Concerning the costs to the university's students, classes and departments as a result of the outage, Judd declined to comment on it specifically, saying only that he believed there was a "significant" cost.
Steps are being taken to prevent an incident like Thursday's from happening again, Judd said.
"We are in the midst of the complete redesign of the university's security network," Judd said.
The hardware that caused Thurday's Internet interruption was replaced with temporary parts. The permanent parts are on rush order, he said.
"We take pride in the system we have on campus," Judd said. "I would like to express my apologies to the campus community for what took place."
The Internet failure was indiscriminant, also affecting San Jose State University President Robert Caret.
"It drove me crazy," Caret said. "I do about 80 percent of my business on the web."
Caret said he wasn't sure about the costs to the campus because of the Internet outage.
"There are a lot of issues we have to deal with," he said. "We have to take the network to the next level of security."
Not having Internet access meant faculty had to find other means of carrying out their lesson plans.
"It was chaotic," said Elizabeth Dietz, a professor in the nursing school at SJSU. "I couldn't touch the work I'd done at home. I had to re-create a lecture for my class, and I had no up-to-date information."
Robert Milnes, director of the school of art and design, said that last Thurday's Internet incident is proof of how reliant we are on contemporary technology.
"I deal with about 40 to 100 e-mails everyday, and I didn't have access to them," he said. "That was critical. I couldn't do anything."
Judd said e-mails were held on a proxy server while the system was down. When the Internet came back up, the e-mails were relayed to their appropriate destinations.
