News - Feb 2004

Feb 24 2004 - It appears that Level-3 has finally resolved their latency problems. This problem was traced to multiple configuration errors over the last few months on their router's OC-12 interface (622mb ATM). All L-3 customers connecting through the SBC-NAP including UIC experienced huge delays of up to 700ms. The typically delay should be in the 1-2ms range. We also have been reporting to L-3 that occasionally our peering session with them which normally contains the full Internet routing tables (130,000 or so routes) would sometimes lose some or all of its routes over a 2 minute period and then immediately reacquire them. L-3 was unable or unwilling to confirm this and pretty much ignored our reports. This morning at 9AM it happened again and their people while monitoring the latency problem saw it happen on their side. They have since identified and corrected this BGP problem in the backbone. We'll keep or fingers crossed on both issues and will monitor latency on their connection and watch for drop outs. We have decided that L-3 is now our secondary ISP with ICN as our primary ISP.

Feb 20 2004 - Sorry for the short notice. The new hardware arrived today and we desperately need to use it for improved performance.

Feb 20 2004 - mailserv will be down for maintenance from 01:00 to 03:00 Friday February 20. Users of Webmail and Eudroa who have their mailbox located on mailserv will not be able to access their mail but mail directed to people on mailserv will be queued so none will be lost.

Feb 17 2004 - Level-3, our "primary" ISP is having major problems with latency on their router that serves UIC. It has been going on sporadically since January and we have opened lots of tickets only to have them be closed by L-3 when the problem disappears. Recently it has been so bad we shifted all I-1 traffic over to ICN to give L-3 a chance to identify and correct the problem. Traffic to UIUC, Internet-2, MREN, Starlight, etc are not effected. All other sites (on Internet-1) are reachable but will appear somewhat slow. L-3 is fully aware of the problem and its impact on us. They are actively working on it and they hope to have it fixed shortly. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Feb 14 2004 - Tigger crashed at about 6pm Friday 2/13. It appears that the "email inbox" filesystem had become corrupted. We rebooted the system and ran a filesystem repair tool, which recovered almost all of the email inboxes. However, some inboxes that were being updated at the moment of failure may have been damaged.

If your inbox is on tigger and you believe you are missing some mail that had been there prior to 6pm Friday, please send a detailed problem report to systems@uic.edu. We may be able to recover some messages from backups made late Thursday and early Friday.

Feb 14 2004 - Tigger crashed at about 6pm Friday 2/13. It appears that the "email inbox" filesystem had become corrupted. We rebooted the system and ran a filesystem repair tool, which recovered almost all of the email inboxes. However, some inboxes that were being updated at the moment of failure may have been damaged.

If your inbox is on tigger and you believe you are missing some mail that had been there prior to 6pm Friday, please send a detailed problem report to systems@uic.edu. We may be able to recover some messages from backups made late Thursday and early Friday.

Feb 12 2004 - This is an FYI to the ALERTS list @ 15:35: One of our IPSs - Level 3 - has noticed intermittent latency on our connection again today, same as yesterday afternoon. They will be working with the LEC to have them isolate the problem on their network. We will post relevant information regarding this issue as it becomes available. ACCC NOC