From August 22
A campus-wide internet outage on the first day of classes caused headaches across UNM for everyone from IT personnel, bookstore employees and, most importantly, students and teachers whose access to internet is crucial to learning.
“It is very rough for a first day,” said Networks Director Steve Perry.
Perry said IT was notified of an outage around 10:45 a.m. and dispatched a team to try and resolve the issue quickly after they were not able to remotely connect to their equipment.
On Monday evening University officials said that as of 6 p.m., internet servers were back to 99 percent connectivity for wired and wireless internet on campus.
"The network team will continue working through the night for additional diagnosis and troubleshooting to pinpoint a root cause and restore the remainder of the network," the University said in an official statement. "IT will then research the entire issue and work on mitigating strategies to prevent something like this from happening again."
Perry urged students to be patient and said internet on campus had been recently beefed up.
“We’ve expanded the WiFi over the summer, but unfortunately this wasn’t something that we were anticipating, obviously, on the first day of class,” he said.
In a Daily Lobo Twitter poll posted Monday afternoon, 89 percent of 55 respondents as of 8:45 p.m. said they had experienced internet issues that day.
The internet failure caused disruptions to regular activities across campus, including the bookstore, where operations were drastically slowed, resulting in longer-than-usual lines at the start of the semester.
Students took to Twitter to express their frustration, some also saying that they were unable to access myUNM from an off-campus location.
Carrie Mitchell, director of UNM Bookstore, said due to the internet issues there were only five registers available, leaving most students waiting for upwards of half-an-hour.
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Normally there are twelve registers going, which allows a wait time of around seven minutes, Mitchell said. In addition, they couldn't accept credit cards; only bursar account funds and cash.
For those students with only credit cards who braved the long lines, the bookstore has started holding books so they wouldn't have to go through the selection process all over again.
They are also currently warning students at the door about the wait times as well as the lack of payment options, she said.
“We’re trying to get them when they come in the front door, let them know,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell said the hardest part for her is watching students struggle from the onset of the year.
“The last thing you need on the first day of class is to wait,” she said. “We just work really hard to get people through. To see this, when you can’t do anything, it’s painful.”
Mitchell said she and her staff are letting students know they have the option to put necessary materials on their bursars and pay them off via credit card later.
She said she has been in constant contact with IT over the issues.
“We are in touch with them at all times,” Mitchell said.
Despite the obstacles, Mitchell doesn’t want students to get discouraged or lose faith in the bookstore.
“We have worked really hard the last two years to lower the prices and be more competitive,” she said. “And this was our big semester, to be able to show people how we are competitive, we are trying different ways to help students and so, it just feels bad.”
Marissa Garcia, a dental hygiene student, said she had waited in line fifteen minutes to get her textbooks, but said it wasn’t too frustrating for her personally, as she and friends found a way to pass the time.
“We were watching videos on Facebook (and) just talking. So it wasn’t too bad,” Garcia said.
The problems with WiFi affected her in class as well, particularly her professor, she said.
“We weren’t able to log on to the computer and our instructors weren’t able to show us what they would go over in class,” Garcia said.
Sage Byrne, a UNM graduate student as well as advisor at the College of Arts and Sciences, said she has been unable to carry out job duties because of the outage.
"My coworkers and I are unable to access student information and emails as they come in, making the first day of school frustrating to those who need assistance," she said, adding that she has been unable to access Learn and check up on updates for her classes.
IT continues to reassure students and visitors that they are working to fix the outage.
“Be patient, we will restore it, just give us time to get the root cause down and then address whatever equipment issues that we have to replace,” Perry said.
