Problem: Network Outages
During the spring term of 2017, DU had at least two substantial network outages that affected student and staff use of widely used university applications such as Pioneer Web, the library's online resources, and Canvas. Both also killed the campus network connection to the public internet. In both cases, the applications and services remained available to users whose connection paths did not pass through the failed network elements. Thus, services hosted off campus (e.g. Canvas) continued to be available to users located off campus during the outages, and locally hosted services remained available to users on campus.
Network outages was attributed to a failure of a networking device on the campus, another to a failure in the network connection to the ISP providing service to the campus. Clearly, the immediate need was to restore service; service restoration was handled efficiently by IT technical staff and the ISP involved within a few hours in each case.
In the longer term, a strategic evaluation needs to be made and a strategic decision taken: How do you think the campus IT leadership should respond to these outages? Does the campus have an adequate network connection today? Or is the network sufficiently important to the campus that an upgrade, possibly involving a second (redundant) network connection, is needed?
The response should include a reference list. Double-space, using Times New Roman 12 pnt font, one-inch margins, and APA style of writing and citations.