WCU/NCREN Network Connectivity
On Friday, September 6, the internet went down for 11 hours at WCU. But nobody noticed. That’s because IT was able to complete the addition of a second internet connection this summer.
IT now has an internet connection through MCNC (Microeletronics Center of North Carolina)- a non profit organization that operates the State of North Carolina’s Research and Education Network (NCREN) in Charlotte. The second internet connection runs to Asheville. Last May, with only one connection, a fiber cut in Balsam resulted in a 5 hours outage for the entire campus. On Friday, September 6, the new connection in Charlotte had a fiber issue near Huntersville NC that severed our 10Gig connection to Charlotte. We failed over to the Asheville link and then rolled back to the Charlotte connection once the fiber was repaired. No one noticed the difference except our networking team.
Having this redundancy is an important part of IT’s Disaster Recovery Plan and an important part of keeping the academic and business activity of the university running without interruption.