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University of Twente Back Online

Posted by michael on from the backups-located dept.

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."

61 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    The University of Tene was only half as good.

  2. I bet... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...someone must have put a fire under their asses to get it done that quick. Oh wait...

  3. Whoa... by dirkdidit · · Score: 2, Funny

    Damn that must have been some hot hot file trading to burn the internet equipment.

  4. Erm ... by carb · · Score: 4, Funny
    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.

    And one giant hurrah for the original structural engineers for building us one giant flamable deathtrap.

  5. Congratulations... by anthonyrcalgary · · Score: 5, Funny

    And the first thing to happen after getting back online is getting slashdotted. :)

    --
    When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
    1. Re:Congratulations... by winnetou · · Score: 4, Funny
      And the first thing to happen after getting back online is getting slashdotted. :)

      $ date --rfc-822; time lynx -dump www.utwente.nl | wc
      Sat, 23 Nov 2002 02:38:31
      183 551 7907

      real 0m0.182s
      user 0m0.090s
      sys 0m0.010s

    2. Re:Congratulations... by jesser · · Score: 3, Funny

      Slashdot editors: in a few hours, please post an article entitled "University of Twente No Longer Slashdotted".

      --
      The shareholder is always right.
  6. In other News.. by He+Was+Gamecubed · · Score: 2, Funny

    In other news, the world's largest interconnecting bandwidth pipes have a usage increase of roughly 50%. This is thought to be a result of University of Twente students catching up on all the latest pr0n, warez, and mp3 that is a vital part of the university experience

  7. So!? by SHEENmaster · · Score: 2, Funny

    The hidden webcams were back up, popups and all, withing 12 hours!

    Capitalism is said to be driven by greed, but I think a more powerfull force is at work!

    --
    You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
  8. Re: Deathtrap? by saskboy · · Score: 3, Funny

    No one died in the fire, as I read on the website.
    Unless you are talking about the death of the computers.

    Bless their Pentium, and RISC souls.

    --
    Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
  9. and i hope we all learned our lesson. by frenetic3 · · Score: 4, Funny

    this is what happens when too many lonely college students try to download "too hot for tv.mpg" at once and don't take the filename seriously.

    --
    "Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
  10. Good for them. by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What was the cause of the fire anyway?

    1. Re:Good for them. by brrrrrrt · · Score: 3, Informative

      Fire was started by an anonymous coward.
      2 tiny fires were already put out the day before the big fire.
      Jerrycans with petrol and matches were found in the (remaining part of the) building.
      1 guy was arrested today. The police refused to comment about him.

    2. Re:Good for them. by Drahca · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:Good for them. by oddrune · · Score: 3, Informative

      As yet, the cause of the fire is unknown. Technical investigators will look into it and investigate the possibility of the fire having been started. This may take some time. .. from: http://srv1ut.utwente.virtu.nl/en/news/engels1.doc /

    4. Re:Good for them. by NotAnotherReboot · · Score: 2

      That part about this being the exams period definitely leaves room for a motive to do this.

  11. Deliberate attack on Debian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I believe this computing facility hosted a Debian mirror. Let us not think that this fire was due to some type of isolated eletrical fault or a gas leak. I think this is a deliberate strike against Debian. People are heartily sick of the ceaseless but apt-get is sooo cool repetition that goes on, unfettered by common sense. Unfounded self-righteousness and wanker elitism is to blame for this act. Debian users...take this as a warning. Other Debian mirrors will surely suffer the same fate as this one. This situation is preventable. Just shut up about apt-get. Gentoo and BSD users are more 3733+ than you anyway

  12. Quick... by BSOD+from+above · · Score: 4, Funny

    everybody link to their home page. If the T1 doesn't smoke, the server will.

    If we just /. spam servers, maybe they will go up in smoke too. Definitely worth a shot.

    --
    Karma: Censored (mostly affected by decency laws)
    1. Re:Quick... by Adam9 · · Score: 2

      Damn.. I wish I had 10gbps on my T1.

  13. Makes you realise how much you depend on it... by Idaho · · Score: 5, Informative

    I am a student at this university, and one of the people who had no internet connection for 2 days because of this.

    The thing is, you don't realise how much you use the Internet everyday until something like this happens.

    It's not that you can't read Slashdot and some other sites - I can do without that for a week or two (honestly, I swear!! :-)

    The thing is, there are exams this week and next week, and you run into problems like this:

    - There is a system where you can see at what location your exams are - *on the internet*.
    - Part of the things you have to learn for exams are on the internet (central server containing a lot of this stuff, which has been burnt away as well).
    - You don't have a clue whether your exams will even take place, maybe the original assignments are burned so they have to make a new exam (might well have been in some cases, and turns out to be the case for one of my exams).
    - You can't mail people to make an appointment or ask about what is going to happen next, you actually have to go there or someway find out their telephone number (if you don't have it - I nearly always use ICQ or mail). I usually look up telephone numbers using...you guessed it...the internet.

    I can go on some more, but I think you can fill in the rest for yourself: you *really* become very dependent on something as "simple" as a permanent internet connection.

    --
    Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
    1. Re:Makes you realise how much you depend on it... by puto · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not to be a jerk, more like devils advocate.

      My univerity had all those resources in the early 90's as well.

      But:
      1. Usually all teachers give out contact info besides email and ICQ. Telephones and such.

      2.University Telephone Directory? Call information?

      3.Good old fashioned book learning?

      4. Dont trust computers to keep vaulabe stuff you need for exams, copies should have been made at least 3 weeks before exam.

      5. If you know the material, what difference if its a new exam? Unless you have one from a testbank and have only studied that instead of the answers. Besides if the exam burned, it is your teachers problem.

      And last but not least you can leave your dorm/apartment and walk your lazy ass over to wherever your information might be, or to the campus and see who knows what is up.

      This is the problem these days, too much reliance on the computer. All of the items you mentioned could have been solved with a quick walk. Or using something as archaic as a telepone.

      I for one would have been watching the action, walked around campus, looked at chicks, talked to my teachers, got involved in the mix.

      Do you think in those two says there were more people getting laid? Riding bikes? Doing something other than vegging out?

      I was an CS major and I was encouraged to only have email communication. But I went around, talked to my professors, did other stuff. No one ever beleived I was a CS geek.

      Just a few thoughts.

      Puto

      --
      The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
    2. Re:Makes you realise how much you depend on it... by donutello · · Score: 3, Funny

      I had this NOC. It was a great NOC. I really like the NOC. It told me where my exams were and stuff. Then it burned up and I was like uhhuhhh. And then I had to look at the university phone book to figure out everyones phone number. It was like ... a bummer.

      --
      Mmmm.. Donuts
    3. Re:Makes you realise how much you depend on it... by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2

      In the event my university's datacentre burned down, we would be in a world of hurt because it also hoses the Lucent 7/RE (new version of the 5ESS) phone switch that handles all campus phones. Of course, it would be rather difficult to burn down, they had that in mind when they made it.

    4. Re:Makes you realise how much you depend on it... by EvanED · · Score: 2

      "Yeh, that contact info [telephone #s] is usually on the syllabus at my school.. but I tend to loose those very quickly, and How are you supposed to know if the prof is even going to be in? Voice Mail you say? what's that?"

      Or in my case, where for some classes (comp sci, physics), it's *only* online.

      "Yes, I too, am a CS major, I get out, I interact with my professors, I do other stuff.. but e-mail is a lot easier then looking for a professor when I have a question, I can shoot an e-mail off, go on to another assignment, and when I get a reply continue."

      Exactly.

      Plus I have a situation where all my physics and comp sci homework is due online.

  14. As Geeks Celebrate by Alien54 · · Score: 3, Funny
    The restoration of the University pr0n collection.

    Some folks had gone into a panic:

    No! No! Not the the pr0n!
    Aeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

    We could go on, but you get the idea.

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  15. neighbours by Traa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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)

  16. wow by tps12 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm surprised to see such outpouring of emotion over this event. The first story had hundreds of comments, and this one looks like it's headed the same way. Frankly, I'm saddened. Granted, fires are scary things, and shouldn't be taken lightly. But come on...no one died, and a single building of computers burnt down. Considering the violence and tragedy that occurs around the world every day, is the loss of a couple thousand dollars of (insured) plastic, metal and silicon really cause for such dramatics? I know this is "News for Nerds," but nerds are people too. Or so I thought. Sometimes I wonder if there's any humanity left on Slashdot...

    --

    Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
    1. Re:wow by circletimessquare · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree. this is the third story related to this: the original fire, then a focus on backup policies, and then a follow up? honestly, why is this fire treated with such interest? basically, a building burnt down. it had a bunch of computers in it. why should we be interested?

      "well you answered your own question, it's really about backup and emergency handling and rebuilding efforts."

      ok, but show me how this fire is different from maybe 100 other fires of a similar nature with similar cause and effect and a similar bandwidth size that didn't warrant a peep from slashdot. i mean c'mon, what next? "backhoe causes intermittent net access failure to bucks county pennsylvania! film at 11!" frankly, who cares?

      i don't get it.

      i don't think we need a story system like kuro5hin, but howabout this: since we already metamoderate the moderators, why not metamoderate the editors? if the problem is that you can identify the editor who posted the story, well, start hiding the editor's identity on the original story so things don't get stupid and personal. hide the story submitter's identity as well. i think the editors can handle the blow to their egos, having their little tags removed from the story post. and as someone who has had 2 stories posted here, i can handle not having my name appear on the story i posted, what do i friggin' care?

      oh boo hoo hoo! i live to see my name on slashdot! lol ;-P

      --
      intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    2. Re:wow by Idarubicin · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Considering the violence and tragedy that occurs around the world every day, is the loss of a couple thousand dollars of (insured) plastic, metal and silicon really cause for such dramatics?

      If there was a fire in the Louvre, and nobody was hurt, there would be no cause for concern, now would there? If the Mona Lisa was turned to ashes, why should we care? It's a hundred bucks worth of canvas and oil paint. Might be worth a bit more if it has a nice frame. On the other hand, it's pretty old, so we would have to account for depreciation.

      Physical objects can have emotional and cultural significance. Some good stuff has come out of the University of Twente. Many on Slashdot know (or are) good people who have been greatly inconvenienced by this event. No, it's not the Louvre, nor is it the Tower of London, nor the Parthenon, nor even the White House. (Incidentally, soldiers from Canada burned the original President's Mansion during the War of 1812.)

      But we are nerds, and our monuments happen to have a slightly different flavour--more functional than ornamental (I do include the White House in this comparision.) Why shouldn't we have something to say about it? Besides, if you read the posts, many tongues remained firmly in cheek. Lots of smiles about hot pr0n, and reference to The Register's photo collection of the World's Worst Server Rooms.

      --
      ~Idarubicin
    3. Re:wow by Permission+Denied · · Score: 5, Interesting
      I'm surprised to see such outpouring of emotion over this event.

      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.

    4. Re:wow by OneFix · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think it's frame of reference. Everyone on here has likely seen a fire...most of us have networking/data center backgrounds (to some extent)...the issues are important for some of us...

      But I'm actually surprised that you somehow think that sympathizing with one cause somehow means that we are unsympathetic with another...

    5. Re:wow by johnalex · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We're not simply talking emotion here. Yes, I hate that Debian took the hit, but that's not the major issue with which many of us empathize.

      Having been in systems administration for a while now (including in a university setting), I assure you that most of us read the story and then wondered, "wow, how would I have handled the situation?" Then, we looked around our offices and realized that if our business (or campus) suffered a fire in the computer area, we would be the ones expected to pull a miracle out of the hat.

      I work at a business now that talks big about disaster recovery but won't ever spend the money for us to go offsite and test it. I've often half-jokingly said that our disaster recovery plan is putting a geek on a plane to our offsite location with two things: the latest backup tapes, and a blank checkbook. My fellow geek and I are going to try again soon to convince them to let us test the system. I hope we get to test the plan before we have to implement it.

      That's what is so big about this story. Many of us old timers have either been there or have had to imagine being there.

      --
      JA
      http://www.johnalex.org/
    6. Re:wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      At least they didn't have to spend much time figuring out if the router was fried...

    7. Re:wow by 3247 · · Score: 2
      Physical objects can have emotional and cultural significance. Some good stuff has come out of the University of Twente.
      But that stuff was rarely physical. So far, no one has mouned about the loss of important data.
      The hardware is nothing that can't be replaced.
      --
      Claus
  17. Feiss... by c0dedude · · Score: 4, Funny

    So i was in the server room, and the fire alarm was like *beep beep beep* and i had to leave and i lost my server. it was a really good server.

    --
    Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
  18. Article on fire by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm surprised no one put a link to the original Slashdot entry...

  19. ERROR: by JessLeah · · Score: 5, Funny

    lp0: printer no longer on fire

    --
    Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
  20. Seriously.. by mindstrm · · Score: 2

    Was there really a 50% increase in major pipes today? And perhaps yesterday? I thought something was funny... couldn't play quake for 2 days cause of an extra 100ms that came from nowhere.

  21. Does anything make it on slashdot thesedays? by Joey7F · · Score: 3, Funny

    Whoopdee doo! If I knew I could get this kinda publicity I would set fire to all kinds of crazy things...

    --Joey

  22. Overclockers beware... by BSOD+from+above · · Score: 2, Funny

    silicon eruption from a molten 486dx can ignite cat-5, unplug from server farm prior to moving clock jumper.

    --
    Karma: Censored (mostly affected by decency laws)
  23. You know what-it's great /. posted this story! by krinsh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Abolute, superclapping kudos to the guys that had a backup and were able to restore operations so quickly.

    Can you imagine how devastating it must have been when the ENTIRE NOC WAS WIPED OUT? Can you imagine how many unemployed people there would be right now if this ever happened to a company and there was no such plan? I hope none of you ever find out, for all your jokes and goofiness.

    NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL DISASTER RECOVERY.

    --
    I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
    1. Re:You know what-it's great /. posted this story! by greenrd · · Score: 2
      No hardware or software can protect against human error - or even (highly unlikely but possible) natural disasters.

      It's stupid to never make backups.

      --
      Female Prison Rape in NY
  24. Re: Deathtrap? by HillBilly · · Score: 3, Funny

    Computers have feelings too.

    I dont know about you, but I hug mine all the time.

    --
    "Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
  25. In denial by Cheese+Cracker · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's not that you can't read Slashdot and some other sites - I can do without that for a week or two (honestly, I swear!! :-)

    As true of most drug dependents, they deny their addiction. ;o)

  26. Huzzah! by Ridge · · Score: 5, Funny
    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.


    I wish I could get these guys over to my house to restore my cable modem back the the glorious speeds I had about 5 years ago. Of course today if they mucked around 'restoring' my bandwidth, the FBI would show up with their guns and confiscate my my coffee pot and take a few donuts as some form of evidence. Oh well, back to my 'high-speed online' web surfing.
  27. Except now it is called by baywulf · · Score: 2

    the University of Nineteen

  28. Re:Christ, if your going to name by jelle · · Score: 5, Informative

    Or before you post, learn geography. The map is of the region of Twente, the University is just north of Enschede in the East.

    --
    --- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
  29. Sheer Brilliance... by deadhammer · · Score: 2, Funny

    First these people have to endure losing and replacing an entire NOC in a fire, and now their new webserver is linked to directly from the slashdot frontpage. Haven't those poor server admins suffered enough?

    --
    I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
  30. Debian elitism, not for long by Laven · · Score: 3, Interesting
    People are heartily sick of the ceaseless but apt-get is sooo cool repetition that goes on

    Not for long. The Fedora project aims to bring a Debian-like community of packages and apt-get to Red Hat Linux. We are early in specification stages at the moment, but developers (NOT USERS YET!) are welcome on our mailing lists.

    I personally feel that Fedora will be very influential for the Linux community in the future.
    Why? Please read my 1st Fedora draft proposal .

    Mailing Lists
    http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/fedor a-announce http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/fedor a-devel

    1. Re:Debian elitism, not for long by Stonehead · · Score: 3, Informative

      First, the Debian community is not an 'elite'. Instead, you are welcome to join. But my point is that Fedora seems waste of efforts to me. Anyone can help Debian, OpenPKG, the freebsd-ports team, the Fink team for MacOSX or even Gentoo with packaging already. That makes sense - users need it and will use it. Playing 'man in the middle' for these pays off, you will learn a lot, and you do help other distributions as well. I don't mean 'there's no point in another community' - there is, just start, and that the best may win. That's what open source works like. But RedHat is a commercial distribution, package management for RedHat seems not that fun to me. Compare it to starting a 'Fink 2' that will never be the default. You will depend on their mistakes, on their decisions. There is one 'man in the middle' too much. Even better, you try to help RedHat, but it's RedHat's choice to let you pay for updates using the RedHat Network. Would they like you?
      Still, let the best win. I hope to hear something from Fedora soon.

    2. Re:Debian elitism, not for long by Laven · · Score: 2

      I was kidding about the elitism, and I realize it is too early for most people to see the impact that Fedora will have. You will see in a few months.

  31. Some pictures... by Sprunkys · · Score: 3, Interesting

    of people hard at work to get my email back online! Thank you very much!

    Pictures

    [Insert own /.-effect-building-on-fire joke here]

    --
    "We live in our minds, and existance is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality" Ayn Rand
  32. Rumour: NOC mis-configured firewall by fluor2 · · Score: 3, Funny

    "I hear that the Twente NOC engineers tried to construct their own firewall."

    (Joke)

  33. Stupid fucking Slashdot editors by 0x0d0a · · Score: 5, Informative

    is getting slashdotted

    Yes. This is downright reprehensible.

    Did you editors not read the comment in the last story? They're running on an emergency setup, and *specifically* requested that their new network *not* be linked to by slashdot.

    See this comment on your own story.

    So they donate resources to Debian, their NOC burns down, they set up an emergency system *and* go to the trouble of politely requesting Slashdot *not* to link to it and the first thing you do is do exactly that, making the network unusable for the students that are already having to deal with the burning down of part of the university.

    Assholes.

    --
    May we never see th
    1. Re:Stupid fucking Slashdot editors by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 2, Informative

      You forget, They dont actually read the stories, they just post them. I doubt the submitter even read it, just relayed it from another source.

      --
      Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
    2. Re:Stupid fucking Slashdot editors by Koos · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Did you editors not read the comment in the last story? They're running on an emergency setup, and *specifically* requested that their new network *not* be linked to by slashdot.
      Did you read this story, then ?

      The normal connections are back at the same speed as before the fire. And since UncleH is quite involved with the network around utwente he is perfectly able to tell whether the servers can take a slashdotting again.

      --
      The Virtual Bookcase: book reviews
  34. It wasn't an accident by fearlezz · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wednesday I joked the BSA lit the fire... Officials reported the fire may have actually been lighted. In 3 days, the university had 4 fires. 3 of them could be extinguised before any damage was done. A 26-year old man has been arrested in the case.

    --
    .sig: No such file or directory
    1. Re:It wasn't an accident by 3247 · · Score: 2
      Hm, there are a lot of people that could have wanted the Twente NOC to be destroyed:
      • A student who wants to avoid exams.
      • BSA
      • RIAA
      • Microsoft
      • SuSE
      • RedHat
      • ...

      Pick one!
      --
      Claus
  35. suspected arsonist arrested by dvdweyer · · Score: 2, Informative

    According to Twentsche Courant a suspected arsonist was arrested.

  36. Router failure by markov_chain · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!
  37. Re:Christ, if your going to name by jelle · · Score: 2

    Not only that. It's lauching at me!

    --
    --- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.