Software failure crashes network
The three major Rice University wireless networks, Rice Visitors, Rice Owls and Eduroam, crashed due to software failure, according to Director of Rice Networking, Telecom and Data Center William Deigaard.
“It went down in a strange way,” Deigaard said. “The three major SSID that we offered [were] all completely down, which is incredibly rare.”
According to Deigaard, Rice uses thin-client centralized control architecture, which means two pairs of controllers serve as the brains of more than 1500 wireless access points on campus.
“There is some large, powerful equipment that lives at the [center] of the network,” Deigaard said. “All the access points around the campus are connected to [the controller and] if that crashes, it can take down a very large number of access points.”
Normally, the crash of a controller can be remedied by moving access points from the crashed controller to the other controller in the same pair, but in this crash, a software bug paralyzed both controllers. Deigaard said network engineers worked through the night of Sept. 4 to upgrade the wireless controller to a newer version.
“We patched it to the newer version the next morning,” Deigaard said. “It took longer than we hoped, [but[ we have been stable since [Sept. 4].”
Rachel Gray, a Lovett College junior, said she thinks the performance of the wireless network is not as satisfying as last semester.
“The Wi-Fi has been more unstable than my ex-boyfriend,” Gray said. “Jokes aside, I’ve had more problems with it this semester than previous semesters. I haven’t personally noticed a decrease in speed, but the communication will drop suddenly.”
According to Deigaard, having many users in one area consuming too much bandwidth can lead to a spotty Wi-Fi connection.
“If moving improves [the connection], then congestion was likely the issue,” Deigaard said. “If, however, people find particular areas that never work, we want to know that. When folks have issues like this, they need to bring the machine to [IT Helpdesk] or our networking team can take a look.”
Lead Student Computer Consultant at the IT Help Desk Galen Schmidt said the most common issues he sees for Wi-Fi problems are bad drivers and bad certificates.
“The drivers for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 weren’t very good when they were released,” Schmidt, a Duncan College senior, said. “Updating the drivers helped in many cases....Some of the updates to Macs have caused certificate problems.”
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