Students uninformed about scheduled server maintenance

When students tried to use the Internet or e-mail early Friday morning, they found that their web access had been inexplicably cut off. The outage Friday morning was, in fact, scheduled network maintenance, and though administrators say the time was approved, many students were adversely affected.

The server maintenance started at midnight and ended at approximately 4 a.m., with rolling blackouts for different servers. During this time students had trouble with access to the internet or e-mail, and were often completely restricted from any access at all.

Two years ago a project determined that 50% of network failure could be prevented by "a routine maintenance window". A committee including representatives from AS&E determined that the best times for the server maintenance were early Friday morning from 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. and early Sunday morning from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m.

"The maintenance windows are for university-wide systems like e-mail and the network," Director of University IT Support Services Kathleen Cummings said. "We have communicated via post-service to all faculty and staff about the windows."

Students are not informed in advance about the outages, even though Tufts employees are told. "We generally do not make contact directly with students; historically that has been done through AS&E (Arts, Sciences, and Engineering)," Cummings said.

Many students were irritated and surprised by the unannounced planned network outage. "The Sunday morning time makes sense, however Thursday night doesn't," sophomore Samuel Ronfard said. "Classes are still held Fridays and [the maintenance window] is right in the middle of study time."

Senior Rachel Androphy was in the process of completing medical school applications when the network went offline. "I was trying to work on [applications] online and it was extremely difficult to complete them." After running to two different computer labs and trying to figure out what happened, Androphy gave up. "It really messed up my plans," she said. Many other students were also preparing for midterm exams on Friday.

According to Cummings, employee resources dictate when server maintenance can be performed. "We were also sensitive to the fact that we do not have the resources to hire engineers to work shifts. The folks who do maintenance till 2:00 a.m. are the same engineers who must report to work in the morning," she said.

Students have suggested posting an announcement about network maintenance on TuftsLife.com or sending informatory e-mails to students' Tufts accounts.

Previously, server maintenance was done sporadically, which according to Cummings, was insufficient to keep the network from failing unexpectedly. Libraries and AS&E requested that the maintenance be held off during exam weeks.