On Wednesday, Mississippi State University faced a campus wide malfunction of the msu1x internet, which shut down access to the internet for approximately two hours.
Mike Rackley, Chief Information Officer at the Information and Technology services said the problem was eventually traced to malfunctioning hardware in Allen Hall. 
“Initially, ITS staff began examining network traffic and error logs to determine the extent of the outage and to search for clues as to what was causing the problem,” Rackley said, “An analysis of information contained in the network logs suggested possible sources of the problem. It then became a process of elimination to ultimately identify the failing component and to isolate it from the campus network.”
Amber Cooper, senior broadcasting major, said the unavailability of the internet hindered her class submissions. 
“It made me upset because I was getting ready to send in some important documents for a class and the internet just shut down,” Cooper said. 
Rackley said during normal business hours, ITS has technical staff on hand to respond at the first sign of a problem. 
“Even during off-hours and holidays, we have staff on call to respond should the need arise,” Rackley said.
“Interestingly, we received a relatively small number of call to the Help Desk about this particular event.  We have a variety of communication channels that we normally use to inform the campus of problems. However, since this particular problem impacted our ability to use our normal communication channels, we just called a number of offices across campus to spread the word about the problem,” Rackley said. 
Students were frustrated at the library, and offices who depend on the internet enjoyed an extended lunch break. 
Rackley said when you’re dealing with technology, particularly a collection of technology as large and complex as the MSU campus network, the potential for a problem is always present. 
“We go to great lengths to provide safeguards and redundancy, where appropriate and feasible, to minimize the risk.  Additionally, we have a fantastic technical staff that does a great job of correcting problems quickly should one occur,” Rackley said. “We’re constantly upgrading hardware and software network components to ensure that our equipment is up-to-date and reliable and that it can handle an ever-increasing volume of network traffic.”
For any complains or concerns visit its.msstate.edu or call 325-9311.