NEWS: Planned Network Reorganization on October 23, 1999

The Springfield Campus network will be down on October 23, 1999 from 7:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. for equipment reorganization and reconfiguration.

All users at the Springfield campus will be unable to connect during these hours including dial-up services.  Mt. Grove and West Plains Internet access will also be interrupted.  Short intervals will exist when all or part of the facilities appear functional, but users are advised to stay off until after 11:00 p.m.

October 13, 1999

The Basics:

Computer Services Networking will be shutting down core network services in the five major networking zone that make up the entire Springfield campus.  This will cause outages on all Missouri State University Springfield file servers, e-mail servers, web servers, dial-up services, end-user client machines, and the Internet itself.  Access from the Mt. Grove and West Plains campuses to the Internet will also be down for a short period of time during the maintenance window.

The five effected core sites will be down one or two sites at a time starting on Saturday, October 23, 1999 at 7:00 p.m.  Full services are expected to be restored by 11:00 p.m. the same night.  Large pockets of various services will be available during the outages, but users expecting uninterrupted access to Missouri State University or Internet services should avoid using the networks during this maintenance period.  As usual, the use of personal computer applications that do not need network services will not be affected by this outage.

Techno-babble for the brave:

Networking will be removing the old Cisco AGS+ routers and the old Token Ring network that has been supporting AppleTalk only for the last three years.  Due to an international decline in the use of AppleTalk as a networking protocol, Cisco had elected to postpone the development of packaging AppleTalk in the Inter Switch Link (ISL) trunks that we use to connect the five core sites at Springfield.  Internet Protocols (IP) and Novell protocols (IPX) have been supported on ISL trunks since our new backbone was cut into production just over three years ago.

Cisco released a sufficiently mature release of the AppleTalk over ISL during the mid summer of 1999.  After months of trials and testing by Cisco and Missouri State University, Networking deployed the new Internetworking Operating System (IOS) on our core campus router (Cisco 7513 a.k.a. Mainbrain).  All AppleTalk traffic has been routed by this device for over a month without any incidents.  This allows us to dismantle our previous generation of backbone and remove the non-Y2K compliant AGS+ routers from service.

New network topology maps will be forthcoming as time permits, but the old topology map is still available on our web.  All AGS+ devices (CARR, GLAS, HHPA, and BLSH), the 7010 router (DuctTape),  and all token-ring devices will be removed from service.

Networking will also take advantage of the down time to do some badly need reorganization of the Blair Shannon and Cheek Hall zones and a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) will be recovered from the Performing Arts Center zone for use at the Mt. Grove campus.

If you still want more:

For more information, please contact one of the Networking Personnel.