December 24, 2019 - Since the network outage we experienced in February, we have been implementing the new network design slowly, being careful not to disrupt department and programming needs. The slow rollout resulted in a long project timeline, with the old network susceptible to disruptive events like the one we experienced last week. As of today, we have only been able to migrate eight of sixty-eight buildings to the new network.

Considering the risk inherent to a slow rollout of the new network that would have continued through the end of this academic year, we have updated our plans for the network migration. A newer, aggressive timeline will have the majority of the campus on the new network before students return at the end of January 2020. Although the new timeline will likely mean periodic service disruptions, it limits those disruptions to January only and should allow us to better control the duration of them. 

We plan to move forward on the new schedule starting with the WiFi network on January 2 and  3. Here is the plan for the remainder of January:

  • The weeks of January 6 and January 13 will be extremely busy with most building migrations during those two weeks. You should expect some disruption during the day when the building you occupy is scheduled. We anticipate these disruptions to be of limited duration, with most lasting 15 minutes or less, but we also anticipate some challenges which could cause some buildings to take longer. We will send frequent updates with detailed information days before the building you occupy is scheduled for its network migration, including information about alternative resources and work locations available.
  • The week of January 20 will see us through the end of the project, including moving almost all network segments and services to new routing equipment. At this point, almost everything will be running on a new network design which will not be susceptible to the kinds of service disruptions we have experienced. The entire campus will experience a disruption during this final step of the upgrade and we will send detailed information days before it is set to take place.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience of the recent disruptions, but more importantly for the inconvenience the new schedule will create as we move quickly to a better, stable computer network on campus. Please keep watching for frequent updates through the Daily Mammoth and  the IT website at https://www.amherst.edu/it.  As always, please contact us at AskIT@amherst.edu if you have any questions. 

Thank you for your patience.