A Campus Without Internet

Monday, 26 October 2013

It was a Monday just like any other here on the the beautiful Harding campus. Teachers, students, and faculty were up and active, ready take on what the day had for them. Everything was fine and dandy until around 11:00 a.m. when word began to spread quickly that something was wrong. Very wrong. The internet was DOWN. Most of us can admit that in this day and age, we've become very dependent on our use and access of the internet, and life without it is... difficult to say the least. But nevertheless, our access to the internet was ripped away, with no knowing of when it would be back.

The Harding IT department began to search for the problem immediately, hoping to find a quick fix so life could go on as normal. Unfortunately, minutes turned into hours and they were still no closer to finding a solution.  

There are many, many reasons why this was just no good for anyone. In recent years, we have become a campus increasingly dependent on the internet. As students, we need internet for various types of research, for turning in assignments on CANVAS, for studying, and for staying connected with our teachers and peers. Teachers also rely heavily on the internet for teaching purposes and for communication with students and other faculty. During the internet "outage" all of the above activities were put on hold, and students were beginning to panic. Most were not able to turn in required assignments or do research needed to make progress on certain assignments. To complicate things further, email ceased to work as well, so for the most part, students and teachers were left in the dark. Not quite as important, but still a painful side effect, not only could students not work on most school assignments, they also couldn't enjoy some of their most favorite past times such as Facebook, twitter, YouTube, Netflix, online games, etc. Now, I know I can't speak for all students, but I'm confident I speak for most.

For two days this went on. Students and teachers were forced to make due with the resources they had and to move forward with the lessons as best they could. Meanwhile, up here at the DormNet help desk, we were given the task of answering phone call after phone call giving the same vague answer to countless frustrated students: "I'm very sorry, but the internet in down all over campus. AT&T is working on a solution and will hopefully get the internet back up and working as soon as possible."

It was soon discovered that the internet issue was not a campus problem but a problem with AT&T, so the Harding IT department couldn't do much to fix the problem. Unfortunately, there was some trouble getting AT&T to take responsibility for our failing internet and to send someone to come get it resolved. Needless to say, as a result there are some bitter feelings up here towards the professionalism of AT&T and the length of time it took them to resolve the issue... but oh well. In the end, the solution was simple. Simply put, our internet connection comes to us via a pipeline that runs from Searcy to Little Rock and back. In the middle is a small fiber hut by the Searcy airport with a bad slot that needed replacing. It seems ironic that the longest internet failure on the Harding campus in over 10 years was caused by something so small and so simple. One bad slot only a couple miles away. Let's just be thankful those two internetless days are behind us:)