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University of Twente Back Online
UncleH writes "University of Twente is back online again, after the University NOC burned to ashes on wednesday. This also means that the much discussed University Campus network is also fully available again. The university already had internet access through a masquerading box in the network of their neighbours. Big hurrah for the network engineers of the University, large applause for the network engineers of SURFnet for restoring the 10Gbps Point of Presence within 36 hours after the fire."
The neighbours also have their site in English. They offer serverspace from an old Dutch gold storage facility (nuclear safe building deep underground). As cool as this is their quality leaves something to be desired ;-)
(the error in the last link is theirs, not mine...try it yourself by going to this page and clicking on "qualty".....really...quite funny)
Although this is not official (yet), the cause seems to be arson. From the official anouncement of CIV (loosly translated in, Center for Information Services):
"Nothing is known yet about the cause, the police have started an investigation. It is true however, that their have been reports of 2 small fires in the same building the day before the fire. Security has been increased due to this. The exact cause of the big fire is not known at this moment."
Today there was another incident. They found fuel and matches in the building housing the most IT services (second only to the TWRC building, which has burnt down). Some people claim it was already burning and they were able to put out the fire. All people leaving that building (building of Computer Science) were checked for fuel fumes.
This is indeed the most interesting exams period I have ever had here at the University.
I think the outpouring of emotion is because a lot of us can relate to those network engineers - but not on this scale.
It's about getting a page at 22:00 because a brownout at 17:00 fried a router and it takes you an hour to drive to the closet, it takes some time to figure out the router died, back to the office to set up a replacement, back to the closet, etc. You end up back home at 03:00. I'm not a network engineer, but I've seen some of the stuff these guys put up with.
Can you imagine the chaos those engineers and administrators faced? You have to wonder how much sleep they got over this period. And you can imagine the thoughts going through their heads as they watched their NOC burn down (of course, thoughts of "Oh shit" come after learning that nobody died or was injured - if you're worried first about the equipment instead of human lives, then yes, there's something wrong, but I can imagine the oncoming dread as you learn all your work is gone and you MUST come up with a replacement DAMNED QUICK).
Getting a page or phone call in the evening really sucks, but you can usually go home at the end of the day. These guys probably worked their asses off for days on end.
I congratulate these engineers and admins and offer a virtual beer.
I saw the following on my favorite MUD, Tsunami, thanks to Sitavan:
There was a fire today that destroyed the datacenter at the University of Twente in Enschede, The Netherlands, housing a SurfNet (the academic and research network over there) POP amongst many other things.
A friend sent me these syslog entries which I found interesting... The first one is from a router in Enschede that was destroyed, and the second one is from the router in Amsterdam that it connected to:
0.ar5.enschede1.surf.net 3613: Nov 20 7:20:50.927 UTC:
%ENV_MON-2-TEMP: Hotpoint temp sensor(slot 18) temperature has
reached WARNING level at 61(C)
lo0.cr2.amsterdam2.surf.net 1146: Nov 20 07:20:56.458 UTC:
%CLNS-5-ADJCHANGE: ISIS: Adjacency to ar5.enschede1 (POS2/0) Down,
interface deleted(non-iih)
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!