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AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Server outage takes out Internet, GWorld across campus

A handful of dining venues experienced temporary GWorld outages for more than 12 hours today due to a server problem in South Hall. | Hatchet File Photo

A simultaneous Internet and GWorld outage hit areas of campus early this morning and continued for more than 12 hours.

The Division of Information Technology and Facilities Management worked since about 2 a.m. Sunday to resolve a power outage in South Hall that caused in-house network equipment and servers to go down, knocking out Internet, telephone and cable TV access in the residence hall, interior GWorld readers at Lafayette Hall and network services in neighboring buildings.

GWorld issues were also reported, affecting Colonial Cash deposits, debit parking, vending, laundry and off-campus vendors from The Avenue complex to Ivory Tower. GWorld services were restored Sunday at 3:45 p.m., Rachel Blevins, marketing and communications manager for the Division of Information Technology, said.

To mitigate the impact of the outage, IT administrators contacted various departments, including the University Police Department to resolve building access issues related to the GWorld outage.

Electricians worked with with external vendors to repair the equipment in South Hall and restored GWorld operations by switching to a backup server, Blevins said.

Michael Walker, a support analyst in the Division of Information Technology, said he received an alert from administrators at about 5 a.m. and the server outage was resolved at 4:45 p.m. He said he could not provide details of its cause due to “a security issue.”

Though he said it was not a common occurrence, Walker did not expect such an outage to happen again.

“We have certain things in place for this not to happen,” he said.

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