Residents of Maxwell and Channing Cox residence halls were unable to use any computer network services for almost the entire weekend as a result of a hardware malfunction.
Officials from Kiewit Computation Center said they became aware of the problem on Saturday afternoon, but several affected residents told The Dartmouth they were without any network services beginning at around 11:30 p.m. Friday night.
The system was reported fully functioning again at 6:00 p.m. last night.
While the system was down, residents of Maxwell and Channing Cox were unable to access a number of computer programs that required connecting to the network -- including BlitzMail, DCIS Navigator, Netscape Navigator and Online Library.
The shutdown also prevented students from signing on to print servers to print documents at Kiewit, Collis Student Center and at other public printers.
Punch Taylor, director of technical services at Kiewit, said the problem was caused by a foul-up in the central processing unit at Maxwell and Channing Cox.
Taylor said the processor "went bad for reasons we don't know," but speculated there may have been a failure in the firmware -- the permanently encoded programming contained inside the processor.
Many students were angered by the lengthy delay in correcting the malfunction -- a delay that Taylor said was because the two people who would ordinarily deal with the problem "were out of town" over the weekend.
Sean Dunten, the Kiewit technician who corrected the problem by replacing the faulty processor yesterday afternoon, said, "I don't think the problem was reported to the right people ... It looked like the ball got dropped somewhere."
Taylor said as far as he knew, Kiewit did not receive any complaints from students during the network failure, but Maxwell resident Allison Cuff '98 said she and her roommates called Kiewit to report the problem and were "unable to get through."
Several of the affected Maxwell and Channing Cox residents said the length of the shutdown was an incredible inconvenience.
Maxwell resident Alison Carter '98 said she was "very disappointed in Computing Services" and fellow Maxwell resident Jesse Bankman '98 said being without network services caused him a several hours of "headaches."
Cuff called the experience "a major hassle."
Lauren Newton '98, a resident of Channing Cox, said being without BlitzMail and other network services for almost two days made her "realize how dependent we are on the system."
"It was kind of unfortunate ... but it wasn't a crisis. I went ahead and checked my mail somewhere else, like people who live off campus do all the time," Newton said.
Taylor said network failures through an entire building or buildings, such as was the case this weekend, are "pretty rare."
He said problems with individual network outlets are much more common.
