Monday, February 1, 2016

Internet Outage 02/01/2016

Thank you for your patience on Monday (02/01) when the District experienced an internet outage.

WHAT CAUSED THE OUTAGE?
The outage appears to have been caused by a software bug in one of the District's switches located at the Heritage Middle School location. The software bug--in reality, think of it as "firmware" or "operating system" for a piece of network equipment--took some time to identify and bypass. At this time, it is unknown what may have caused the glitch that resulted in the outage.

WHAT TOOK SO LONG?
As you might imagine, since the outage began mid-morning and lasted until the afternoon, it was a difficult problem to diagnose. ECTO Network team members with collaboratively with Cisco--who make the equipment--and, later in the day, Computer Solutions, whom you may remember helped us make the move to the new Network Operations Center (NOC). In the end, ECTO staff was able to bypass the problematic piece of equipment (a short-term strategy, however).

WHEN WILL THIS BE RESOLVED?
On Tuesday (02/02) at 4:00pm, the EC TechOps team will work to refresh the software causing the problem on this critical piece of networking equipment, hopefully ensuring that the problem will not re-occur. Our partner, Computer Solutions, will also have network engineer(s) on hand to provide assistance as needed (at no cost). Resolving it may take less than an hour, or if challenges arise, much longer. If the outage should re-occur on Tuesday, then this timeline will be accelerated.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE!
Your patience is appreciated as ECTO works to resolve these issues that impact teaching, learning and leading in the ECISD. Please be aware that in event of an outage, updates are sent out periodically via Telegram to principals and Campus Technology Coordinators. Also, you can follow #ectoupdate via Twitter.

With appreciation for your patience,

Miguel Guhlin
Director, Technology Operations

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