Showing items tagged internet. Show All
Large Internet Outage Across East Coast Around Noon Today
There are widespread reports of Internet outages across the east coast that started around 11:30am this morning. These are affecting access to various services including Gmail, Blackboard, WebEx, and many other services that UMBC students, faculty and staff use. It is also broadly affecting Verizon FIOS and other providers, so accessing sites outside of work or school will also be affected.
We would ask people to be patient, we have seen indications service is already being restored in many area. In the meantime, if you are on a video conference for work or class, dialing in with you phone should help ensure your audio remains clear even if the video is experiencing issues due to these outages.
I've attached a link to the brief Washington post article on this.
We are hopeful service will be restored to all applications shortly.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me directly at
Damian Doyle
Associate Vice President
DoIT - UMBC
Posted: January 26, 2021, 1:21 PM
UMBC Now Has a 100 Gb Connection & Faster Netflix Loading
Enjoy more streaming on a faster network connection
DoIT would like to announce that UMBC now features a 100 gigabit connection speeds available on campus. In addition, there is now a Netflix node installed in the Data Center on the ground floor of the Engineering Building.
The Netflix node is a server that holds the video content that is streamed to your device. When streaming a show or movie from Netflix, your data is typically streamed from nodes deployed across the country and world. Traditionally, Netflix tries to have your stream come from a node that is closest to you, delivering the best possible streaming experience.
This is all possible thanks to the Netflix Open Connect program and Norwin Malmberg, Chief of Network Technology at Maryland Research and Education Network (MDREN). The Netflix Open Connect program partners with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide Netflix customers the highest quality viewing experience possible by localizing substantial amounts of traffic.
MDREN acts as an ISP and provides advanced network services to multiple University System of Maryland (USM) schools, private colleges, and community colleges throughout the state. Malmberg contacted Netflix and was able to get membership into the Open Connect program, thanks to MDREN consuming sufficient Netflix bandwidth throughout all the varied partner campuses and organizations to qualify for a node.
UMBC volunteered to partner with MDREN and host the node on our campus to provide the best possible service to not only our student, but students throughout the state.
"High speed connections and low network delay..."
Mike Petry, General Associate for DoIT, helped install the node on campus on April 25th, 2016. Petry said, “The benefits to UMBC and the other USM campuses is having a node with high speed connections and low network delay that is able to serve up content to campus connected users.”
A network map that shows how UMBC is connected to the MDREN network. The streaming is outbound from the node toward the customer watching a stream. The node is physically on campus, but should be viewed as being on the MDREN network. You can view the bits per second here and hover over each path.
“Netflix knows what content is on which servers and will direct a server that does have it to start streaming it to you.”
Users won't have to do anything on their part and instead just stream Netflix on their device as they normally would, as the server selection for delivering your stream is done behind the scenes by Netflix software. “For instance, you may requests a movie that isn't on the server on campus.” Petry said, “Netflix knows what content is on which servers and will direct a server that does have it to start streaming it to you. The win for them is to have the most popular content as close as possible to avoid long network paths.”
Happy streaming.
Posted: June 8, 2016, 7:55 AM
DoIT News Moving to myUMBC Groups
As of today, the DoIT News will be published through the DoIT Group on myUMBC, which in turn feeds the new DoIT site at doit.umbc.edu. As such, we will no longer be maintaining this Movable Type blog. However, it will remain for archive purposes.
FYI to DoIT Group members:
How do I post a new blog in myUMBC groups?
If you have questions, please contact the Technology Support Center (TSC) located on the first floor of the library next to the RLC or call 410.455.3838.
Tags:
Posted: July 3, 2012, 10:19 AM
Known Issue: Students Can't Access Bb Course Files
DoIT is tracking a problem that has emerged in a dozen Fall 2011 Blackboard courses in which students see the following error:
Workaround Actually, the files DO exist in the course, but need to be re-linked (NOT re-uploaded). We understand this is a challenging problem and workaround at a very hectic time of year. We have submitted a support ticket into Blackboard, which is working to dentify the cause of this problem. We will update UMBC Bb instructors as we learn more.
Posted: September 7, 2011, 8:53 AM