Classrooms stalled, office operations halted. Cerritos College fell into the darkness of slow Internet. The Internet on campus froze leaving students and faculty without proper resources to run day-to-day operations.
The campus Internet service provider, AT&T, ran into technical difficulties last Wednesday and Thursday.
The problem was a failed fiber optic link from within AT&T, not a direct issue on campus.
In the interim, a back-up link responded saving Cerritos from an Internet blackout.
The network failure also affected other areas that run the same AT&T Internet service.
Acting Director for the Information Technology department Patrick O’Donnell explained the internal problem that occurred at AT&T.
“One of the cards had gone out so [AT&T] had to replace that, but that was only about a two-hour down time from the time our Internet provider let us know and the time AT&T got the card replaced,” O’Donnell said.
The Internet fray left students stranded with homework, research and course work still left to be finished for their classes.
Jasmin Hernandez, graphic design major, struggled during the impasse while working on homework and started looking at other resources out of the campus.
“Well, as a graphic designer you always have to be on a computer and if you want to check something on the Internet to inspire yourself, you don’t have that low-dial up service that is here at Cerritos,” Hernandez said.
“I might as well go to Cypress, it has better service. I just do work at home instead. I think there’s no service anywhere whatsoever,” she added.
The current Internet plan at Cerritos College is called a GigaMAN service, running at 1.0 gigabits per second.
The back-up link is run through a DS3 service running at 45 Mbps, significantly lower than the primary connection.
According to O’Donnell, only about 50% of the GigaMAN link is used and congruent with the student population; enough to support the campus.
Instructional aide at the library, Daisy Cruz, explained the hassle students go through this semester when trying to connect to the network, both through desktops and Wi-Fi hotspots.
“We can’t really do anything about the Internet. Students have to come here [the library] for the hot spot usually. Usually they’re able to get on [the Internet] after a while. During this semester, it has been acting up, but just recently. I haven’t had problems with it before,” Cruz said.
The Wi-Fi hotspots are dispersed evenly throughout the campus with more emphasis on high-traffic areas.
New Wi-Fi hotspots are being established but close proximity with each hotspot intertwines the connections causing them to connect with one another.
All community colleges in California run their Internet service through Scenic Solutions Group, a company dedicated to provide on-site network support, web hosting, co-location, and business e-mail services.
“[Scenic] provide all the links for the college for all the colleges in the state of California. At times [Scenic] have to rent links between others and AT&T is the one that they go with. The chancellor’s office pays for our Internet,” O’Donnell continued.
The California Community College Chancellor’s Office provides the campus Internet access at no cost to Cerritos College.
“We may pay very minimal to have some of the stuff so it’s basically what’s available in the agreements that [Scenic] have. AT&T is the company that [Scenic] are using at this point,” O’Donnell said.
