Internet services have been restored. - College of Charleston Libraries

Internet service has been restored to normal.

A brief explanation of what happened is provided below:

Last week an Engineer at an upstream Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Atlanta introduced a new circuit between devices that ultimately serve the College of Charleston. Engineers at one of the College’s local Internet providers were unaware of the changes made in Atlanta and the conflict that had been created regarding how messages should be optimally directed toward the College of Charleston. As a result, there was conflict about how best to route information over the Internet to and from the College.  This resulted in the delay in receipt of our Internet transmissions or in some cases the non-delivery of the transmission.

Once the issue was identified and corrected, it then took approximately 36 hours for the corrective routing to become effective throughout the Internet.

Compounding the effect, the College is generally utilizing its available Internet resources to the max.  Information Technology has two major projects underway to double our Internet capacity and to replace the campus core switches as well as those devices providing Internet connectivity to the campus.  IT targets completion of both of these projects by the start of the Fall 2012 semester.

You can read more about how internet paths are decided on a technical level at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bgp.