Internet Outage Scheduled
December 14, 2016
The Office of Information Technology (OIT) would like the campus community to be aware that on Thursday, Dec. 22, the Merced 2020 Project construction team will relocate a primary campus network fiber connection. This fiber line, a backbone used to connect to all Internet services, requires the construction team to cut the existing line, pull the fiber out of the conduit, reroute the line and resplice to establish connectivity back to CENIC, our Internet provider.
Because the project is so complex, all campus network connectivity will be unavailable for up to six hours, starting at 2 a.m. Dec. 22.
While this effort presents a small but significant risk to campus services, it is imperative that the campus community take precautions in the event of an unplanned outage. OIT has developed a timeline to help users stay informed of the process. The specific schedule is as follows:
Thursday, Dec. 22:
- 2 a.m. — Fiber optic splicing begins.
- 6 a.m. — Splicing complete.
- 8 a.m. — OIT Network team begins reconnecting fiber strands to new fiber patch panels.
- Concurrently, a separate OIT team of experts will validate all IT servers and services. When validation is complete, services will return to normal.
For progress updates, please visit it.ucmerced.edu. OIT Facebook and Twitter accounts will also be updated. To learn more about the Merced 2020 Project, visit merced2020.ucmerced.edu.
If you have specific questions or concerns, please contact Infrastructure Services Director Al Espinoza at 209-455-0866.
In the event of outages or system crashes or other unexpected situations, it's good to have a backup plan. To protect the center of your digital life, install CrashPlan.
OIT offers this application free to current UC Merced faculty and staff members.
CrashPlan, a powerful, automatic backup tool, runs continually in the background of a device, providing continuous backup of new files. Users receive unlimited data backup for use on up to four systems for personal or business use.
Data backed up is stored off-site in an encrypted state, and is FERPA and HIPAA compliant.
