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University of Twente Back Online 189

Posted by michael from the backups-located dept.
UncleH writes "University of Twente is back online again, after the University NOC burned to ashes on wednesday. This also means that the much discussed University Campus network is also fully available again. The university already had internet access through a masquerading box in the network of their neighbours. Big hurrah for the network engineers of the University, large applause for the network engineers of SURFnet for restoring the 10Gbps Point of Presence within 36 hours after the fire."
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University of Twente Back Online More

University of Twente Back Online

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  • Good (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 22, 2002 @09:12PM (#4736531)
    The University of Tene was only half as good.

    • Re:Good - pictures of the demise (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Pictures of the sudden demise of our network can be found here: ( hosting from an other uni wasn't such a bad idea after all :-) ) http://tiefighter.et.tudelft.nl/~maurits/fotosite/ index.html see ya Maurits

  • I bet... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 22, 2002 @09:14PM (#4736545)
    ...someone must have put a fire under their asses to get it done that quick. Oh wait...
  • Those students had to go 36 hours without pr0n???

  • Whoa... (Score:2, Funny)

    by dirkdidit ( 550955 )
    Damn that must have been some hot hot file trading to burn the internet equipment.
    • They were probably accessing the new material at Asia the Geek's [asiacarrera.com] web site after learning of its existance after reading the /. article about Star Trek Nemisis trailers. Star Trek is really big over in Europe, you know.

  • Erm ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by carb ( 611951 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @09:15PM (#4736554) Homepage
    Big hurrah for the network engineers of the University, large applause for the network engineers of SURFnet for restoring the 10Gbps Point of Presence within 36 hours after the fire.

    And one giant hurrah for the original structural engineers for building us one giant flamable deathtrap.

  • Congratulations... (Score:5, Funny)

    by anthonyrcalgary ( 622205 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @09:16PM (#4736558)
    And the first thing to happen after getting back online is getting slashdotted. :)

    • Re:Congratulations... (Score:4, Funny)

      by winnetou ( 19042 ) <erik+slashdot@warbase.selwerd.nl> on Friday November 22, 2002 @09:44PM (#4736694) Homepage
      And the first thing to happen after getting back online is getting slashdotted. :)

      $ date --rfc-822; time lynx -dump www.utwente.nl | wc
      Sat, 23 Nov 2002 02:38:31
      183 551 7907

      real 0m0.182s
      user 0m0.090s
      sys 0m0.010s

    • Stupid fucking Slashdot editors (Score:5, Informative)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:27AM (#4737705) Journal
      is getting slashdotted

      Yes. This is downright reprehensible.

      Did you editors not read the comment in the last story? They're running on an emergency setup, and *specifically* requested that their new network *not* be linked to by slashdot.

      See this [slashdot.org] comment on your own story.

      So they donate resources to Debian, their NOC burns down, they set up an emergency system *and* go to the trouble of politely requesting Slashdot *not* to link to it and the first thing you do is do exactly that, making the network unusable for the students that are already having to deal with the burning down of part of the university.

      Assholes.
      • You forget, They dont actually read the stories, they just post them. I doubt the submitter even read it, just relayed it from another source.

      • Re:Stupid fucking Slashdot editors (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Stupid, this is NO LONGER the emergency network. Seen the date on the message? This was on wednesday. Now the emergency network ist no longer in usage, so their is no need to avoid linking to them. Only Asshole here is you, because you are too dumb.
      • Did you editors not read the comment in the last story? They're running on an emergency setup, and *specifically* requested that their new network *not* be linked to by slashdot.
        Did you read this story, then ?

        The normal connections are back at the same speed as before the fire. And since UncleH is quite involved with the network around utwente he is perfectly able to tell whether the servers can take a slashdotting again.

    • Slashdot editors: in a few hours, please post an article entitled "University of Twente No Longer Slashdotted".

  • Shouldn''t it now be University of Twente-one ? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sorry to the guy who came up with this nonsense in the previous story. I posted this without his copyright permission.
  • In other news, the world's largest interconnecting bandwidth pipes have a usage increase of roughly 50%. This is thought to be a result of University of Twente students catching up on all the latest pr0n, warez, and mp3 that is a vital part of the university experience
    • Was there really a 50% increase in major pipes today? And perhaps yesterday? I thought something was funny... couldn't play quake for 2 days cause of an extra 100ms that came from nowhere.
  • "The network should be operational again as soon as possible," said Van Vught. "We do not yet know how long this will take, but it will certainly take a few days." He does not expect the UT to have lost much data. A back-up was made this weekend. "

    I bet the tapes were sitting next to their proprietary tape drives too. Melty Melty.

  • So!? (Score:2, Funny)

    by SHEENmaster ( 581283 )
    The hidden webcams were back up, popups and all, withing 12 hours!

    Capitalism is said to be driven by greed, but I think a more powerfull force is at work!
  • Gentlemen ... START YOUR P2P APPS...
  • this is what happens when too many lonely college students try to download "too hot for tv.mpg" at once and don't take the filename seriously.

  • Good for them. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 ) <pig@hogger.gmail@com> on Friday November 22, 2002 @09:29PM (#4736620) Journal
    What was the cause of the fire anyway?

    • Re:Good for them. (Score:3, Informative)

      by brrrrrrt ( 628665 )
      Fire was started by an anonymous coward.
      2 tiny fires were already put out the day before the big fire.
      Jerrycans with petrol and matches were found in the (remaining part of the) building.
      1 guy was arrested today. The police refused to comment about him.

    • Re:Good for them. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Drahca ( 410495 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @10:02PM (#4736763)
      Although this is not official (yet), the cause seems to be arson. From the official anouncement of CIV (loosly translated in, Center for Information Services):

      "Nothing is known yet about the cause, the police have started an investigation. It is true however, that their have been reports of 2 small fires in the same building the day before the fire. Security has been increased due to this. The exact cause of the big fire is not known at this moment."

      Today there was another incident. They found fuel and matches in the building housing the most IT services (second only to the TWRC building, which has burnt down). Some people claim it was already burning and they were able to put out the fire. All people leaving that building (building of Computer Science) were checked for fuel fumes.

      This is indeed the most interesting exams period I have ever had here at the University.

    • Re:Good for them. (Score:3, Informative)

      by oddrune ( 102921 )
      As yet, the cause of the fire is unknown. Technical investigators will look into it and investigate the possibility of the fire having been started. This may take some time. .. from: http://srv1ut.utwente.virtu.nl/en/news/engels1.doc /
    • According to Twentsche Courant [tctubantia.nl] a suspected arsonist was arrested.
      • According to this [nu.nl] article (in dutch), the fire was started by someone from the university. The 26 year old man has plead guity last sunday.

        He had been caught on the friday before, lighting fire in another university building.

  • Deliberate attack on Debian (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 22, 2002 @09:31PM (#4736635)
    I believe this computing facility hosted a Debian mirror. Let us not think that this fire was due to some type of isolated eletrical fault or a gas leak. I think this is a deliberate strike against Debian. People are heartily sick of the ceaseless but apt-get is sooo cool repetition that goes on, unfettered by common sense. Unfounded self-righteousness and wanker elitism is to blame for this act. Debian users...take this as a warning. Other Debian mirrors will surely suffer the same fate as this one. This situation is preventable. Just shut up about apt-get. Gentoo and BSD users are more 3733+ than you anyway

    • I believe this computing facility hosted a Debian mirror.

      security.debian.org is now hosted at klecker.debian.org. However, according to Debian's security list:

      We expect the next security advisories to be sent out on Monday, since all packages that were already prepared for release on Wednesday are lost and need to be rebuilt.

      • Re:Deliberate attack on Debian (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        security.debian.org is now hosted at klecker.debian.org. However, according to Debian's security list

        Can you guess which installation is going to be hit next? Thus, it's especially fitting that this server is named after the deceased Joel 'Espy' Klecker, the first (but not last) Debian developer to actually die from boredom waiting for Woody to be released.

        Hope the insurance at the server farm covers fire damage....
    • People are heartily sick of the ceaseless but apt-get is sooo cool repetition that goes on

      Not for long. The Fedora project aims to bring a Debian-like community of packages and apt-get to Red Hat Linux. We are early in specification stages at the moment, but developers (NOT USERS YET!) are welcome on our mailing lists.

      I personally feel that Fedora will be very influential for the Linux community in the future.
      Why? Please read my 1st Fedora draft proposal [hawaii.edu] .

      Mailing Lists
      http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/fedor a-announce [hawaii.edu] http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/fedor a-devel [hawaii.edu]

      • First, the Debian community is not an 'elite'. Instead, you are welcome to join. But my point is that Fedora seems waste of efforts to me. Anyone can help Debian, OpenPKG, the freebsd-ports team, the Fink team for MacOSX or even Gentoo with packaging already. That makes sense - users need it and will use it. Playing 'man in the middle' for these pays off, you will learn a lot, and you do help other distributions as well. I don't mean 'there's no point in another community' - there is, just start, and that the best may win. That's what open source works like. But RedHat is a commercial distribution, package management for RedHat seems not that fun to me. Compare it to starting a 'Fink 2' that will never be the default. You will depend on their mistakes, on their decisions. There is one 'man in the middle' too much. Even better, you try to help RedHat, but it's RedHat's choice to let you pay for updates using the RedHat Network. Would they like you?
        Still, let the best win. I hope to hear something from Fedora soon.

  • Quick... (Score:4, Funny)

    by BSOD from above ( 625268 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @09:34PM (#4736648) Homepage
    everybody link to their home page. If the T1 doesn't smoke, the server will.

    If we just /. spam servers, maybe they will go up in smoke too. Definitely worth a shot.

  • Makes you realise how much you depend on it... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Idaho ( 12907 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @09:36PM (#4736651)
    I am a student at this university, and one of the people who had no internet connection for 2 days because of this.

    The thing is, you don't realise how much you use the Internet everyday until something like this happens.

    It's not that you can't read Slashdot and some other sites - I can do without that for a week or two (honestly, I swear!! :-)

    The thing is, there are exams this week and next week, and you run into problems like this:

    - There is a system where you can see at what location your exams are - *on the internet*.
    - Part of the things you have to learn for exams are on the internet (central server containing a lot of this stuff, which has been burnt away as well).
    - You don't have a clue whether your exams will even take place, maybe the original assignments are burned so they have to make a new exam (might well have been in some cases, and turns out to be the case for one of my exams).
    - You can't mail people to make an appointment or ask about what is going to happen next, you actually have to go there or someway find out their telephone number (if you don't have it - I nearly always use ICQ or mail). I usually look up telephone numbers using...you guessed it...the internet.

    I can go on some more, but I think you can fill in the rest for yourself: you *really* become very dependent on something as "simple" as a permanent internet connection.
    • Not to be a jerk, more like devils advocate.

      My univerity had all those resources in the early 90's as well.

      But:
      1. Usually all teachers give out contact info besides email and ICQ. Telephones and such.

      2.University Telephone Directory? Call information?

      3.Good old fashioned book learning?

      4. Dont trust computers to keep vaulabe stuff you need for exams, copies should have been made at least 3 weeks before exam.

      5. If you know the material, what difference if its a new exam? Unless you have one from a testbank and have only studied that instead of the answers. Besides if the exam burned, it is your teachers problem.

      And last but not least you can leave your dorm/apartment and walk your lazy ass over to wherever your information might be, or to the campus and see who knows what is up.

      This is the problem these days, too much reliance on the computer. All of the items you mentioned could have been solved with a quick walk. Or using something as archaic as a telepone.

      I for one would have been watching the action, walked around campus, looked at chicks, talked to my teachers, got involved in the mix.

      Do you think in those two says there were more people getting laid? Riding bikes? Doing something other than vegging out?

      I was an CS major and I was encouraged to only have email communication. But I went around, talked to my professors, did other stuff. No one ever beleived I was a CS geek.

      Just a few thoughts.

      Puto
      • In the event my university's datacentre burned down, we would be in a world of hurt because it also hoses the Lucent 7/RE (new version of the 5ESS) phone switch that handles all campus phones. Of course, it would be rather difficult to burn down, they had that in mind when they made it.
      • 1. Usually all teachers give out contact info besides email and ICQ. Telephones and such.
        Yeh, that contact info is usually on the syllabus at my school.. but I tend to loose those very quickly, and How are you supposed to know if the prof is even going to be in? Voice Mail you say? what's that?

        2.University Telephone Directory? Call information?
        I happen to know how the Campus Information gets it's phone numbers.. you guessed it.. The IntrAnet

        3.Good old fashioned book learning?
        Not if the only copy of the assignment was on the server.

        4. Dont trust computers to keep vaulabe stuff you need for exams, copies should have been made at least 3 weeks before exam.
        How can you make copies 3 weeks before the exam when you don't even get the what's going to be on the exam till the class day before the exam or at best 2 class days before.

        It is true, you never know how much you take for granted till it's not there. Take High-Speed 'net access.. (like my university provides). When I go home, all we can get is Dial-Up, I never realized how much I use the internet like my book-shelf until I can't get my "books" as fast as I usually can (SGI STL reference for one.. no I'm not printing it out - and after buying required course books, I'm not spending more money on a book where I can access the info for free)

        Yes, I too, am a CS major, I get out, I interact with my professors, I do other stuff.. but e-mail is a lot easier then looking for a professor when I have a question, I can shoot an e-mail off, go on to another assignment, and when I get a reply continue.

        • "Yeh, that contact info [telephone #s] is usually on the syllabus at my school.. but I tend to loose those very quickly, and How are you supposed to know if the prof is even going to be in? Voice Mail you say? what's that?"

          Or in my case, where for some classes (comp sci, physics), it's *only* online.

          "Yes, I too, am a CS major, I get out, I interact with my professors, I do other stuff.. but e-mail is a lot easier then looking for a professor when I have a question, I can shoot an e-mail off, go on to another assignment, and when I get a reply continue."

          Exactly.

          Plus I have a situation where all my physics and comp sci homework is due online.

      • My comments can only be taken in the context of The University of Adelaide, but I think it is representative of other universities around the place.

        1. Usually all teachers give out contact info besides email and ICQ. Telephones and such.

        Yes, they are published in their lecture notes... which are online.

        2.University Telephone Directory?

        ... which is online.

        Call information?

        The switchboard just uses the online 'phone directory.

        3.Good old fashioned book learning?

        Yes, using books found in the library catalogue... which is only available online.

        4. Dont trust computers to keep vaulabe stuff you need for exams, copies should have been made at least 3 weeks before exam.

        Come off it, I've just studied about 600 pages of lecture notes for three weeks, I am not going to make hard copies of them just so I can use them for those three weeks.

        5. If you know the material, what difference if its a new exam? Unless you have one from a testbank and have only studied that instead of the answers. Besides if the exam burned, it is your teachers problem.

        It makes a difference because lecturers are notorious for reusing past examinations and there is an established history of a large percentage of students failing when the exam is significantly different to previous years' exams. This is not exactly justification from the moral high ground, but you get the picture...

        Like it or not, the network has become a crucial piece of infrastructure in many organisations around the world. There is no good reason why this shouldn't be so; the network is not intrinsically evil, such that it will corrupt us all if we rely on it. This particular network has suffered a catastrophic failure, but that fire could just as well have been in the telephone switchboard, denying all 'phone conversations, or indeed in the computer science building, which would have made all the lecturers inaccessable.

        It is all very well to say, "But I went around, talked to my professors," but that is not really a scalable study method when 130 students want to review a semester long course.

    • I had this NOC. It was a great NOC. I really like the NOC. It told me where my exams were and stuff. Then it burned up and I was like uhhuhhh. And then I had to look at the university phone book to figure out everyones phone number. It was like ... a bummer.
    • It's not that you can't read Slashdot and some other sites - I can do without that for a week or two (honestly, I swear!! :-)

      As true of most drug dependents, they deny their addiction. ;o)
    • The college I attend doesn't even have internet access except in the labs. They are finally putting in a wireless network, but it won't be until next year--after I will have graduated.

  • As Geeks Celebrate (Score:3, Funny)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @09:36PM (#4736654) Journal
    The restoration of the University pr0n collection.

    Some folks had gone into a panic:

    No! No! Not the the pr0n!
    Aeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

    We could go on, but you get the idea.

  • neighbours (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Traa ( 158207 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @09:38PM (#4736662) Homepage Journal
    The neighbours [virtu.nl] also have their site in English [virtu.nl]. They offer serverspace from an old Dutch gold storage facility (nuclear safe building deep underground). As cool as this is their quality [virtu.nl] leaves something to be desired ;-)

    (the error in the last link is theirs, not mine...try it yourself by going to this [virtu.nl] page and clicking on "qualty".....really...quite funny)

  • wow (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tps12 ( 105590 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @09:41PM (#4736677) Homepage Journal
    I'm surprised to see such outpouring of emotion over this event. The first story had hundreds of comments, and this one looks like it's headed the same way. Frankly, I'm saddened. Granted, fires are scary things, and shouldn't be taken lightly. But come on...no one died, and a single building of computers burnt down. Considering the violence and tragedy that occurs around the world every day, is the loss of a couple thousand dollars of (insured) plastic, metal and silicon really cause for such dramatics? I know this is "News for Nerds," but nerds are people too. Or so I thought. Sometimes I wonder if there's any humanity left on Slashdot...
    • Frankly, I'm saddened. Granted, fires are scary things, and shouldn't be taken lightly. But come on...no one died, and a single building of computers burnt down

      OK, now we extract the important bits...

      a single building of computers

      SWEET

    • Re:wow (Score:2, Insightful)

      by circletimessquare ( 444983 )
      I agree. this is the third story related to this: the original fire, then a focus on backup policies, and then a follow up? honestly, why is this fire treated with such interest? basically, a building burnt down. it had a bunch of computers in it. why should we be interested?

      "well you answered your own question, it's really about backup and emergency handling and rebuilding efforts."

      ok, but show me how this fire is different from maybe 100 other fires of a similar nature with similar cause and effect and a similar bandwidth size that didn't warrant a peep from slashdot. i mean c'mon, what next? "backhoe causes intermittent net access failure to bucks county pennsylvania! film at 11!" frankly, who cares?

      i don't get it.

      i don't think we need a story system like kuro5hin, but howabout this: since we already metamoderate the moderators, why not metamoderate the editors? if the problem is that you can identify the editor who posted the story, well, start hiding the editor's identity on the original story so things don't get stupid and personal. hide the story submitter's identity as well. i think the editors can handle the blow to their egos, having their little tags removed from the story post. and as someone who has had 2 stories posted here, i can handle not having my name appear on the story i posted, what do i friggin' care?

      oh boo hoo hoo! i live to see my name on slashdot! lol ;-P

    • Re:wow (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Idarubicin ( 579475 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @10:04PM (#4736771) Journal
      Considering the violence and tragedy that occurs around the world every day, is the loss of a couple thousand dollars of (insured) plastic, metal and silicon really cause for such dramatics?

      If there was a fire in the Louvre, and nobody was hurt, there would be no cause for concern, now would there? If the Mona Lisa was turned to ashes, why should we care? It's a hundred bucks worth of canvas and oil paint. Might be worth a bit more if it has a nice frame. On the other hand, it's pretty old, so we would have to account for depreciation.

      Physical objects can have emotional and cultural significance. Some good stuff has come out of the University of Twente. Many on Slashdot know (or are) good people who have been greatly inconvenienced by this event. No, it's not the Louvre, nor is it the Tower of London, nor the Parthenon, nor even the White House. (Incidentally, soldiers from Canada burned the original President's Mansion during the War of 1812.)

      But we are nerds, and our monuments happen to have a slightly different flavour--more functional than ornamental (I do include the White House in this comparision.) Why shouldn't we have something to say about it? Besides, if you read the posts, many tongues remained firmly in cheek. Lots of smiles about hot pr0n, and reference to The Register's photo collection of the World's Worst Server Rooms.

      • Re:wow (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        wow, i didnt know canada burnt down the original whitehouse... after we bomb iraq, lets go after canada!!
      • nor even the White House. (Incidentally, soldiers from Canada burned the original President's Mansion during the War of 1812.)

        Something I've wondered for a while, as a non-American with too little knowledge of your country..

        The Banks house from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air - is it deliberately modelled after the white house? Or are there lots of houses like that in the USA?

        (Of topic I know, but I was suddenly reminded by your comment)

        • Federal law requires that 1 out 3 homes built must have a "major design element" from the White House. So it answer your question yes most houses are white and large pillars. It is good that you Brits are watching Fresh Prince to better understand the complex culture and sociological underpinnings of the great country USA. You next assignment will be to watch Mel Gibson in The Patriot.

      • Re:wow (Score:2)

        by 3247 ( 161794 )
        Physical objects can have emotional and cultural significance. Some good stuff has come out of the University of Twente.
        But that stuff was rarely physical. So far, no one has mouned about the loss of important data.
        The hardware is nothing that can't be replaced.

    • Re:wow (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Permission Denied ( 551645 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @10:06PM (#4736779) Journal
      I'm surprised to see such outpouring of emotion over this event.

      I think the outpouring of emotion is because a lot of us can relate to those network engineers - but not on this scale.

      It's about getting a page at 22:00 because a brownout at 17:00 fried a router and it takes you an hour to drive to the closet, it takes some time to figure out the router died, back to the office to set up a replacement, back to the closet, etc. You end up back home at 03:00. I'm not a network engineer, but I've seen some of the stuff these guys put up with.

      Can you imagine the chaos those engineers and administrators faced? You have to wonder how much sleep they got over this period. And you can imagine the thoughts going through their heads as they watched their NOC burn down (of course, thoughts of "Oh shit" come after learning that nobody died or was injured - if you're worried first about the equipment instead of human lives, then yes, there's something wrong, but I can imagine the oncoming dread as you learn all your work is gone and you MUST come up with a replacement DAMNED QUICK).

      Getting a page or phone call in the evening really sucks, but you can usually go home at the end of the day. These guys probably worked their asses off for days on end.

      I congratulate these engineers and admins and offer a virtual beer.

      • Every year or so our company brings in some consultants, who have never done our (IT Staff) job but somehow know how to do it better than us. One of the things they invariably tell us, it that we need a DR site. They always say something like "What if there is a major disaster such as an earthquake or a fire?" My answer was always, "If there is a disaster of that magnitude, the last place I am going to be is work." Whether I would have that luxury or not I hope I never have to find out, but I agree with you. What the hell are these guys thinking as everything is going up in flames? Not cool. On a side note, our datacenter almost went up when a huge disk array caught on fire. The pipes got flooded but luckily the sprinklers didn't go on and hose down all the servers. (No, we didn't have halon at that point.) You'd be more scared if I actually said the name of the company. Sad but true.

      • Re:wow (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        At least they didn't have to spend much time figuring out if the router was fried...

    • Re:wow (Score:4, Insightful)

      by OneFix ( 18661 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @10:29PM (#4736851)
      I think it's frame of reference. Everyone on here has likely seen a fire...most of us have networking/data center backgrounds (to some extent)...the issues are important for some of us...

      But I'm actually surprised that you somehow think that sympathizing with one cause somehow means that we are unsympathetic with another...

    • Re:wow (Score:3, Interesting)

      by johnalex ( 147270 )
      We're not simply talking emotion here. Yes, I hate that Debian took the hit, but that's not the major issue with which many of us empathize.

      Having been in systems administration for a while now (including in a university setting), I assure you that most of us read the story and then wondered, "wow, how would I have handled the situation?" Then, we looked around our offices and realized that if our business (or campus) suffered a fire in the computer area, we would be the ones expected to pull a miracle out of the hat.

      I work at a business now that talks big about disaster recovery but won't ever spend the money for us to go offsite and test it. I've often half-jokingly said that our disaster recovery plan is putting a geek on a plane to our offsite location with two things: the latest backup tapes, and a blank checkbook. My fellow geek and I are going to try again soon to convince them to let us test the system. I hope we get to test the plan before we have to implement it.

      That's what is so big about this story. Many of us old timers have either been there or have had to imagine being there.

  • it caught flames yet again. Damn slashdotters.

  • Feiss... (Score:4, Funny)

    by c0dedude ( 587568 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @10:03PM (#4736770)
    So i was in the server room, and the fire alarm was like *beep beep beep* and i had to leave and i lost my server. it was a really good server.
    • it was a really good server.

      You won't missing it much once you see that it's really a depressed [utwente.nl] server (may be from all that fire).

      Too bad it's offline. Here's a mirror [ukclimbing.com] for those who haven't seen it.

  • Article on fire (Score:3, Informative)

    by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @10:06PM (#4736778) Homepage
    I'm surprised no one put a link to the original Slashdot entry [slashdot.org]...

  • ERROR: (Score:5, Funny)

    by JessLeah ( 625838 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @10:21PM (#4736831)
    lp0: printer no longer on fire
    • ...is plug and play too.

      I hear plasmas are a great data transport medium, I bet all those ones and zeros are now very far away.
      • FireWire(TM) is a registered trademark of Apple Computer. Expect a call from their lawyers within the next 5 milliseconds. (Expect the case to settle out of court within the next 5 years.) ;)
  • Now thats what I call a Firewall!

  • Does anything make it on slashdot thesedays? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Joey7F ( 307495 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @10:51PM (#4736920) Homepage Journal
    Whoopdee doo! If I knew I could get this kinda publicity I would set fire to all kinds of crazy things...

    --Joey
  • Abolute, superclapping kudos to the guys that had a backup and were able to restore operations so quickly.

    Can you imagine how devastating it must have been when the ENTIRE NOC WAS WIPED OUT? Can you imagine how many unemployed people there would be right now if this ever happened to a company and there was no such plan? I hope none of you ever find out, for all your jokes and goofiness.

    NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL DISASTER RECOVERY.

  • Huzzah! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ridge ( 37884 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @11:39PM (#4737059)
    Big hurrah for the network engineers of the University, large applause for the network engineers of SURFnet for restoring the 10Gbps Point of Presence within 36 hours after the fire.


    I wish I could get these guys over to my house to restore my cable modem back the the glorious speeds I had about 5 years ago. Of course today if they mucked around 'restoring' my bandwidth, the FBI would show up with their guns and confiscate my my coffee pot and take a few donuts as some form of evidence. Oh well, back to my 'high-speed online' web surfing.
    • I wish I could get these guys over to my house to restore my cable modem back the the glorious speeds I had about 5 years ago. Of course today if they mucked around 'restoring' my bandwidth, the FBI would show up with their guns and confiscate my my coffee pot and take a few donuts as some form of evidence. Oh well, back to my 'high-speed online' web surfing.

      Oh the heady days of being an early adopter, when it was you and the guy across the street who were the only ones on unmetered cable internet. Hell I remember in college, 6 or so people in apartments got cable and split it between them paying just 2 dollars over a normal modem connection. This was in 1996. It was funny because 4 of the people were in apartments below the other 2, so they had cable out a window.

  • your university after a number, at least learn to spell it correctly.
  • the University of Nineteen

  • lp: The printer is on fire! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So, did anyone actually see the "lp: The printer is on fire!" message?
  • First these people have to endure losing and replacing an entire NOC in a fire, and now their new webserver is linked to directly from the slashdot frontpage. Haven't those poor server admins suffered enough?

  • Dutch Telecom recovering from record effort (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Dutch leisure facilities were stretched to the breaking point recently, while Dutch Telecom workers recovered from their record-breaking, 2.7-hour effort. Beer and "herb" suppliers reported a massive surge in demand as hundreds of Telecom workers left en masse for breaks at 11:13 am Friday, hours after lifting a manhole cover and connecting a spare pair of wires at an out-of-office location.

    "It was hell out there" said DT assistant foreman Paul Verhoeven, "we would break for 20 minutes, and get right back into it for another 10. I barely had time for the forms, and then my assistant went down with a sore thumbnail."

  • Some pictures... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sprunkys ( 237361 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:00AM (#4737660)
    of people hard at work to get my email back online! Thank you very much!

    Pictures [virtu.nl]

    [Insert own /.-effect-building-on-fire joke here]

  • Rumour: NOC mis-configured firewall (Score:3, Funny)

    by fluor2 ( 242824 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:22AM (#4737697)
    "I hear that the Twente NOC engineers tried to construct their own firewall."

    (Joke)

  • It wasn't an accident (Score:3, Informative)

    by fearlezz ( 594718 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @06:11AM (#4737856)
    Wednesday I joked the BSA lit the fire... Officials reported the fire may have actually been lighted. In 3 days, the university had 4 fires. 3 of them could be extinguised before any damage was done. A 26-year old man has been arrested in the case.
    • Hm, there are a lot of people that could have wanted the Twente NOC to be destroyed:
      • A student who wants to avoid exams.
      • BSA
      • RIAA
      • Microsoft
      • SuSE
      • RedHat
      • ...

      Pick one!

  • Router failure (Score:5, Interesting)

    by markov_chain ( 202465 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @07:57AM (#4738004)
    I saw the following on my favorite MUD, Tsunami [thebigwave.net], thanks to Sitavan:


    There was a fire today that destroyed the datacenter at the University of Twente in Enschede, The Netherlands, housing a SurfNet (the academic and research network over there) POP amongst many other things.

    A friend sent me these syslog entries which I found interesting... The first one is from a router in Enschede that was destroyed, and the second one is from the router in Amsterdam that it connected to:


    0.ar5.enschede1.surf.net 3613: Nov 20 7:20:50.927 UTC:
    %ENV_MON-2-TEMP: Hotpoint temp sensor(slot 18) temperature has
    reached WARNING level at 61(C)

    lo0.cr2.amsterdam2.surf.net 1146: Nov 20 07:20:56.458 UTC:
    %CLNS-5-ADJCHANGE: ISIS: Adjacency to ar5.enschede1 (POS2/0) Down,
    interface deleted(non-iih)

  • My provider seems to have old DNS data cached, the link doesn't work. Try their IP-address [217.114.97.32] instead.
  • Internet traffic exchanges worldwide have seen the amount of traffic roughly double in the last couple of hours.

    It is suspected that the increase in traffic is due to mp3/divx/pr0n/warez downloading. But where that traffic comes from is still unknown.
    • Internet traffic exchanges worldwide have seen the amount of traffic roughly double in the last couple of hours.

      I don't think so, i did not see such an increse on our network, and AM-SIX's hugegraph confirms that: -> http://www.ams-ix.net/hugegraph.html

      Zap

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