What to do at home in Swansea when your intranet’s unreachable

By Dr Chris P. Jobling

While working at home I wondered why I couldn’t connect to the new Plagiarism Awareness site recently announced by RSC Wales. Later I decided I’d do some work on Blackboard and found that I couldn’t connect. Odd, I thought!

So I did a ping/traceroute and discovered that the Swansea.ac.uk domain is cut-off from the Internet (see Twitpic image below).

Looks like Swansea is cut off from the Internet at the moment! Twitpic

My only choice is to walk in to work!

A couple of minutes later
The blockage spontaneously removed itself and comparing traceroute traces, it looks like one of Virgin Media’s local routers failed rather than anything on campus.
And we’re back. Comparing traces, it looks like it might have… on Twitpic

Still, I should go to work anyway!