Current Issues | Ongoing Monitoring | Previous Issues | General Info

Current Issues

11/11/2008 Cache Server Upgrade Completed, Service working normally

The work carried out last month to upgrade the caching servers (please see below) is now complete, and statistics that are being produced by the caches indicate that they appear to be working more efficiently than previously.

In addition to this upgrade, the number of servers was increased so that schools' usage is spread over an increased number of caching servers.

Work is continuing on points 4 and 5 below, we will advise schools when this is complete.

17/10/2008 Message from Keith Chandler to all schools

Please accept my apologies for the continued problems that we are experiencing on the Broadband network.

Following the original problem, several work streams are underway:

1. A fault was identified that was causing a memory leak on the squids. The short term fix involves regular restarts of the squids (each night) and monitoring of available memory to manually restart when necessary

2. Synetrix is upgrading all of the squid servers and the Netsweeper policy servers to remove the problem. This upgrade is underway, the policy servers have been upgraded, and the squids are being upgraded in a rolling program. It was also determined early on that the communication method between the squids and the policy servers had changed, so it was necessary to retain an old policy server to talk to the old squids, and to deploy the new policy servers to talk to the new squids, adding to the complexity of the upgrade. This is almost complete, we had previously estimated that this would be complete by10th Oct, I am assured that it will be done by Friday 24th Oct.

3. A separate problem was identified with the IWSS AV servers concerning FTP downloads over HTTP. This is being fixed separately.

In addition:

4. We are negotiating with Transform Sandwell to upgrade the incoming ISP bandwidth from 100Mbit/s to 1Gbit/s. We expect this to be in place before the end of the academic year, this service will be shared with SMBC, but should allow a large increase in available inbound/outbound bandwidth.

5. In preparation for this upgrade, we have asked Synetrix to review the firewall configuration. Schools are currently connected through the firewalls using 100Mbit/s NICs on the firewalls themselves, these will be replaced with 1Gbit/s NICs shortly. Otherwise, no point having a 1Gbit/s feed if you can only use 100Mbit/s of it.

6. As well as this, Synetrix will be increasing the number of squids (and IWSSes) to take account of anticipated increase in bandwidth, which will inevitably lead to an increase in demand, so these too must be increased or else they won’t cope.

30/09/08 Ongoing slowness experienced by some schools

We are working with the ISP to bring a number of extra services on-line to address this problem. The following work, which will not be service-affecting, are scheduled:

• the commissioning of replacement netsweeper policy server following the recent (09/09/08) outage. This work is scheduled for completion by 8th October.
• creation of a separate non-AV'd service for use by schools on request and by negotiation. Details on request, completion by end October 2008
• Addition of extra monitoring tools to the network. This is scheduled for completion by end of November 2008.

09/09/08 Loss of Internet Service to All Sandwell Schools

Broadband Sandwell apologises to schools for problems that occurred on Tuesday 9th September 2008. A loss of service was identified at 08:35 on Tuesday morning and was immediately reported to the managed service provider, Synetrix Ltd. The problem was treated as the highest priority and a number of senior Synetrix engineers were involved in identifying the cause of the fault and its subsequent rectification. Unfortunately, it took some time for them to determine the cause which was eventually identified as being due to a faulty network interface that caused several other servers to fail. The faulty system was taken out of service at 3.00pm and will be repaired.

Broadband Sandwell are in discussion with Synetrix to try to determine why the cause of the issue was not identified more quickly and to ensure that their monitoring systems are upgraded so that any subsequent similar faults are resolved more quickly.

Until the faulty server is repaired and returned to service, there may be occasional "drop outs" due to the remaining servers being placed under additional stress. Schools are asked to re-try any failed web browsing attempts by revisiting the website concerned and report persistent problems to our helpdesk.

09/06/08 Sandwell MBC Power Testing

Sandwell MBC advise us that they plan to carry out some tests of the recent electrical upgrade on Sunday 29th June 2008 which may result in loss of some services during the day.

As with previous power down issues, Broadband Sandwell will manage the powerdown cycle to minimise the possibility of problems on Monday 30th June.

We additionally plan to carry out some maintenance work on the Webmail system to try to resolve the disk space issue (see previous issue)

26/06/08 Webmail Unavailability

Schools experienced problems with the Webmail service at the end of May. These were caused by a number of large emails being sent to a number of webmail users, resulting in all disk space being used to store these emails.

The problem is a recurrence of a previous problem. Click here for more details

25/03/08 Sandwell Extranet Problems

Schools are advised that problems accessing the Sandwell Extranet website have now been rectified. Please note that this was a Sandwell MBC issue and NOT a Schools' Broadband Network fault.

28/02/08 Internet Connection Problems

Schools across the borough are currently experiencing internet outage. This was reported to the contractor, Synetrix Ltd, on 27/02/08 and immediately escalated. A "work around" was put into place late on Wednesday evening but failed again this morning.

28.02.08 9:45am Synetrix advise that the service is now restored. The problem has been identified as a faulty DNS server, which has been removed. Synetrix will be carrying out further testing to determine the root cause of the problem.

21/02/08 Webmail Digital Certificates

Sandwell Council advise us that the Webmail service will require new digital certificates from May 2008. Users who may have installed the old certificates (so that you don't have to click OK to the certificate warning each time you log on) will have to remove the old certificate and replace it with the new one following the upgrade. Contact us if you have difficulty once the upgrade has taken place.

7/1/08 Uploading to school's Website server

Some schools have experienced problems with uploading their websites to the SMBC web server from within the Sandwell Schools Broadband Network, please follow this link.

Ongoing Monitoring

Email Problems

Please click here if you are experiencing problems with email

Sending Email Attachments

Click here to see the recommended method for sending large email attachments

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.