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Current Issues

12/12/2011 Loss of Internet service to a number of schools today

Between 11.05am and 11.50am today we experienced a loss of service on one of the internet filter servers (Filter03). The server was taken out of service and restarted as soon as we identified the cause of the problem and this resolved the issue for schools. Broadband Sandwell appreciate that this problem has occurred before and have asked the service provider, Synetrix, to determine the root cause of the issue and to rectify it as soon as possible. Broadband Sandwell apologises to users affected by the problem.

02/08/2011 Planned Loss of service w/c 15th August and 22nd August 2011

Please see Sandwell MBC Extranet Circular 161 for further details of the planned outage to replace core switches.

http://www.lea.sandwell.gov.uk/members/bulletin/circulars/2011/docs/161.pdf

*********** update, 15th August 2011***********

The first phase of this work, to replace the core switch at Sandwell Council House, Oldbury, was completed successfully. The next scheduled work, to replace the core switch at Sandwell Hospital, will take place on Friday 19th August. This will affect schools in the Tipton, Wednesbury and West Bromwich areas.

*********** update, 19th August 2011***********

The second phase of this work, to replace the core switch at Sandwell Hospital, West Bromwich, was completed successfully. The next scheduled work, to replace the core switch at Smethwick Council House, Smethwick, will take place on Monday 22nd August. This will affect schools in the Smethwick and Oldbury areas.

*********** update, 22nd August 2011***********

The third phase of this work, to replace the core switch at Smethwick Town Hall, was completed successfully. The next scheduled work, to complete the configuration and improve resilience, will take place on Friday 26nd August. There may be short periods of unavailability during the day but the engineers will make efforts to avoid this.

*********** update, 26th August 2011***********

The final phase of this work, to to complete the configuration and improve resilience, was completed successfully. The upgrade is complete.

 

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29/07/2011 Loss of service for schools served from the St Michaels node

We have corresponded separately to affected schools. Following the St Michaels move to the new Rowley BSF site, the old school has been decommissioned and services removed. Unfortunately, circuits provided by Virgin Media have taken longer than expected to remove and the old service was decommissioned on Friday 29th July. This was also the expected swapover date for Virgin Media, and most of the work was completed such that service was restored to most of the affected schools by end of the day, with a further two schools reconnected Monday am.

An unanticipated problem with access to a pit in a road in the Rowley area means that four of the schools are still waiting for service to be restored. We are pressing Virgin Media for an early date for this to be completed.

This work was completed during the week of 1st August, service to all affected schools is now restored.

17/03/2011 Loss of Internet connection between 10.30pm and 8.30am on 18/03/2011

In the evening of 17/03/2011, out of hours work was being undertaken to correct a problem with the Internet feed. Unfortunately, once complete, access to the service was lost until early in the morning when an engineer was able to gain access. Broadband Sandwell apologise for the loss of service The underlying work, to correct a slowness problem affecting some schools, is being monitored to determine whether the changes made have resolved the issue.

15/03/2011 Loss of Internet connection between 2.00pm and 3.00pm

We have been advised by Synetrix that this outage was caused by a DNS change upstream of the schools network. This change was not expected to have any effect on the Sandwell network but unfortunately did. Broadband Sandwell apologise for the loss of service at that time.

16/11/2010 Advance Notice of of network unavailability on Sunday 21st November 2010 between 8.00am and 6.00pm

We have been advised by Transform Sandwell that the electrical power in Oldbury Council House will be turned off on Sunday 21st November 2010 for urgent maintenance work.

This is to repair a system at Oldbury Council House that recently failed to start up the backup generators during an external power outage.

This will affect the schools’ broadband network and school websites on that day.

It is anticipated that the power will be off from 8am on Sunday morning until 6pm Sunday afternoon. As a precaution, some services will be taken off-line on Friday 19th pm, and may not be restored until the morning of Monday 22nd, although the broadband itself will only be affected on Sunday. Broadband Sandwell apologises for any inconvenience that may be caused.

 

8/9/2010 Interruption to service for schools in Tipton and Wednesbury areas

Broadband Sandwell apologises to users in the Tipton and Wednesbury areas for disruption that occurred on Tuesday 8th September 2010. This was caused by power problems at Wood Green High School, which is a major node on our network. A temporary power supply has been established to bypass a faulty UPS at the school. It is expected that once the UPS is repaired, the service will need to be taken off line again to restore the equipment to its usual configuration. We anticipate carrying out this work out of hours to minimise further disruption. (Please note that the faulty equipment is part of the broadband network, and not the responsibility of the school.)

16/07/2010 Disruption to the Smethwick node

Broadband Sandwell apologises to users in the Smethwick area for disruption that occurred on Friday 16th July 2010. This was caused by an intruder who, allegedly high on drink or drugs, broke in to the Smethwick Council buildings in the early hours. Having smashed a window to climb in (and cutting himself badly) this individual managed to get in to the network room at the building, where he was later found. At some point he unplugged a number of connections in the schools network cabinets and damaged some equipment. Staff from Broadband Sandwell attended the site as soon as we were aware of the problem, but access was restricted because of spilt blood and the police investigation. Repairs were made difficult by the multiple faults and restrictions imposed by the incident. Most schools were reconnected by mid afternoon.

23/06/2010 reports of slow intenet

We have this logged with Synetrix, however... we believe that it may relate to the fact that there is a football match on this afternoon and people may be trying to view this over the broadband connection. If so, this may not be as successful as users may hope; there will be others trying to do the same thing, and considerations should be given to the streaming servers at the remote end (ITV website) which may clog up because there are too many connections. It may be better to use a television source to watch the match, by routing a TV aerial signal through a video recorder to your projector or large screen. Please consider that the TV network is designed for broadcasting to large numbers, whereas the internet is caters better for small audiences and larger variety. Please note also that whether you use a PC or a televison, there will be licensing issues, particularly if the event is shown to a large audience. Please visit the TV Licensing website for more details.

09/06/2010 Advance Notice of of network unavailability on Sunday 20th June 2010 between 8.00am and 6.00pm

We have been advised by Transform Sandwell that the electrical power in Oldbury Council House will be turned off on Sunday 20th June 2010 for urgent electrical work.

This will be to implement a “power perfector device” that resides between the electrical feed to both inside and outside Sandwell Council House.

This will affect the schools’ broadband network and school websites on that day.

It is anticipated that the power will be off from 8am on Sunday morning until 6pm Sunday afternoon. As a precaution, some services will be taken off-line on Friday 18th pm, and may not be restored until the morning of Monday 21st June. Broadband Sandwell apologises for any inconvenience that may be caused.

22/07/2009 Advance Notice of network unavailability on Sunday 2nd August 2009 between 9.00am and 5.00pm

Transform Sandwell advise that essential maintenance work in the Council House on Sunday 2nd August will result in loss of power to all services, including the schools' broadband service. The service will be available for use on Monday, 3rd August. Please call Broadband Sandwell if this will cause problems with school activities.

8/06/2009 Advance notice of network unavailability on Saturday 20th June 2009 between 10am and 10.30am

Unfortunately, it was found that the maintenance period on May 15th (see below) was not sufficient to allow the work to be completed, and so we are advised that another short maintenance period for the upgrade of the Shireland Learning Gateway service is planned for Saturday 20th June at 10.00am.

This may cause loss of broadband service to schools for up to 30 minutes.

Please call Broadband Sandwell if this will cause problems with school activities.

2/06/2009: Unavailability of broadband services between 2.30pm and 5.30pm today

Broadband Sandwell apologise for this unexpected loss of service, which was caused by a power failure in the Sandwell Council House Server room. The fault only affected parts of the service as it was rectified before all of the UPS backup electrical supply was exhausted. The fault is being investigated by Sandwell MBC and Transform Sandwell to prevent a recurrence of this incident.

15/05/2009 Advance notice of network unavailability on Saturday 16th May 2009 between 10am and 10.30am

We are advised that maintenance work for the Shireland Learning Gateway may cause loss of broadband service to schools on Saturday for up to 30 minutes. Broadband Sandwell apologise for the short notice.

Please call Broadband Sandwell if this will cause problems with school activities.

25/03/2009 Advance notice of network unavailability on Thursday 16th and Friday 17th April 2009

As part of the previously advised upgrade of the Sandwell Schools Broadband Network which will allow greater bandwidth availability to schools, a replacement firewall has been procured for deployment into the network's server array. Replacement of the current firewall with the newly procured device will unfortunately involve loss of service during the changeover. This is planned to take place on the 16th and 17th April (the Thursday and Friday of week 2 of the Easter holiday). Internet connection will be unavailable at that time. If the proposed changeover is not successful, the system will be returned to the previous state to avoid problems the following Monday.

Please call Broadband Sandwell if this will cause problems with school activities.

 

29/01/2009 Advance notice of network unavailability on Friday 6th March 2009

Readers of this page will recall that an earlier posting (17/10/2008, see below) included information about a forthcoming upgrade to the broadband connection to allow greater bandwidth availability to schools. This will include essential firewall changes. Work in this area has been progressing since that time, and the first of these changes has been scheduled to take place on Friday 6th March 2009, between 4pm and 8pm. The change will unavoidably cause loss of connection during this time.

Once the changes have been made, testing will be carried out to confirm that the new configuration performs correctly. If the proposed changes are not successful, the system will be returned to the previous state to avoid problems the following monday.

Please call Broadband Sandwell if this will cause problems with school activities.

(Older issues have been moved to our Previous Issues page)

Ongoing Monitoring

Email Problems

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Sending Email Attachments

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Dealing with Spam

Please click this link if you receive spam in your .sch.uk email account

Virus outbreaks

No problems reported. Please ensure that all of your File Servers, PCs and laptops are running up to date anti-virus software.

Content Filters

Normal Service

Slow Internet Connection

If you are experiencing slow internet connectivity please click here.

Next scheduled downtime

None planned.

 

General Info

Internet access

If schools or centres experience problems then please contact our helpdesk on 0121 569 2414.

How Your Calls are Handled

If you have called us with a broadband problem or fault, this explains the procedures that we will follow.

Windows Updates

We are noticing that a large proportion of the Internet bandwidth is used for software updates. Schools can help to improve the Internet performance by wherever possible re-scheduling software updates to avoid peak demand times (9.30am-3.30pm).

Video Conferencing

The Click2Meet upgrade has been completed. In addition, if you have standalone video-conferencing equipment (such as PolyCom, Sony H323 systems), contact us for advice on connecting it to the broadband network. in order to reduce latency (image break-up). Contact Broadband Sandwell for further information.

Learning Gateway

When schools are in the process of migrating from the Web Mail service to the Learning Gateway, the process involves the coordination of actions by a number of organisations and once underway there is a period of disruption whilst the subsequent changes made propagate around the Internet. The period of disruption to a school's email services may last a few days.

Previous Issues

Please follow this link for information about previous broadband issues.