2024-11-20 Total outage

Today (~8:34 AM) we had a power outage.

Manual intervention was required, the dorms were back online around 09:03 AM.

Update: The outage also particularly affected a switch only relevant for the dorms in Pestalozzistraße 41 – since 4:10 PM this also is fixed, and everything should work again.

2024-09-30 Total outage the 2nd

Today (~4:19 pm), there was second unexpected power outage caused by a tripped circuit breaker (FI switch), which disconnected our systems from the network for about 90 minutes.

Since manual intervention was needed, we had a downtime of around 30 to 45 minutes before the systems were fully up again.

The outage wasn’t caused by anything we were doing, so it came as a surprise. Unfortunately, the UPS (uninterruptible power supply) didn’t last long enough until I could bike up the hill to Fichtenweg 5 to fix it on-site.

These kinds of incidents can happen, but most of you probably didn’t even notice the outage.

2024-09-30 Total outage

Today (3:58 pm), there was an unexpected power outage caused by a tripped circuit breaker (FI switch), which disconnected our systems from the network for about 90 minutes.

Since manual intervention was needed, we had a downtime of around 30 to 45 minutes before the systems were fully up again.

The outage wasn’t caused by anything we were doing, so it came as a surprise. Unfortunately, the UPS (uninterruptible power supply) didn’t last long enough until I could bike up the hill to Fichtenweg 5 to fix it on-site.

These kinds of incidents can happen, but most of you probably didn’t even notice the outage.

2024-09-11 Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse 10

Our systems have been showing an outage at our connections at Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse 10 in Geislingen an der Steige since Wednesday, September 11th.

We received the first report from a resident on September 12, 2024, at 11:42 AM.

Without such a report, we cannot take action because there can be many reasons for the outage of our connections, like construction work in the building or on the street, or other reasons for a power cut.

In the past, we have gone to sites unnecessarily with fully configured replacement devices, so we no longer respond without a report from a resident.

Since we cannot access the building and the technical rooms in the basement without the help of a janitor, no repairs have been possible yet.

We will try again today to fix the issue.

Update 10 AM: The janitor was reached and turned the power off and on again. Everything is back online. The availability and accessibility of janitors is very important!
A big thank you to the janitor for his help – he saved us over two hours of driving time.

2024-08-21 Muenzgasse 7

Muenzgasse 7 has been shown as offline since last night.

So far, no one has contacted us. We are preparing to upgrade the building to Gigabit. (12:00)

3 PM: No power, no internet. We upgraded the hardware. As soon as the power is back on you got gigabit internet.

2024-06-10 Pestalozzistrasse 65 + 63

In the house at Pestalozzistraße 65, it looks like a device died.

The following rooms are probably affected: 222, 223, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322.

If we have access to the tech cabinets and the locks haven’t been changed again, we can probably install new hardware in the evening and get you back online.

Please contact us as soon as possible if you notice any problems.

Update 3:20 pm: Now all the house is offline.

Update 4:26 pm: got an report that 63 is down.

Update 8:05 pm: last tests, but you all should be online and the number 65 upgraded to gigabit speed.

30th December Update

After a failed network-wide update on the night of December 27th to 28th, several buildings experienced unspecific internet outages. We are in the process of resetting all devices and hope this will fix the disturbance. When resetting, the devices will restart, and you will be completely offline for up to 15 minutes. This was, of course, not planned. Please always report outages directly to us and not in any messenger groups. As soon as we receive feedback, we can take appropriate action.

November 2023 Welfenstrasse

The internet at Welfenstrasse 80 is not working right now.

We first heard about this issue on November 11, 2023, after 10 PM, but the information was not very clear at first.

After checking the wireless bridge from a distance and ruling out other possible causes, we hope it’s just a loose mount on the bridge.

But, we are worried that we might need to replace it.

Just to be safe, we are sending a request today for a replacement to StuWe.

All checking and fixing work depends on the weather, because we need to go on the roof to do it.

So, we are hoping for better weather tomorrow to check the hardware in person.

As always, please report right away if something isn’t working. Describe the problem and what kind of tech you are using. We already know how important the internet is, so you don’t need to mention that. Just tick the box if you feel like saying that.

Update Tuesday 14.11.2023 6:30 pm:

In the morning, it became clear that there would be a long break in the rain, which might allow us to work on the roof in Hohenheim. That’s why we decided to have a meeting during lunch break. One of us, who was professionally near Hohenheim, was able to be on the roof in Egilolfstraße during the conversation and check the antenna there and its alignment.

Originally, we thought that the antennas had reached the end of their life and needed to be completely replaced. Getting new ones would probably have been possible by the end of the week, but in the meantime, the poor internet connection would remain. Therefore, we came up with the idea to dismantle a part of a radio bridge, which was used as a test setup, from another roof and replace it in Hohenheim today. Right after the meeting, we implemented this and around 16:50, we were able to replace the antenna on Welfenstraße, which was responsible for the disturbance. After some driving and a bit of traffic, I am now here dictating this text, which I will have ChatGPT format before I leave for the evening.

We hope that the system is now working again and plan to create redundancy soon. This way, if this pair of antennas fails, it can automatically switch to a better system.

Of course, we would prefer to have a fiber optic connection to you, as we usually do, but that seems difficult.

Update 15.11.2023, 7:30 pm:

A new day, a new attempt! Unfortunately, the exchange in Welfenstraße yesterday was not successful. Therefore, we have now placed the antenna that we had removed there on Egilolfstraße and thus swapped everything once.

Currently, there are no new outages to report, and we hope to gain some time to decide on 2 more antenna pairs. These should then be able to function in continuous operation as redundancy for several years.

Once you are in Hohenheim, such an exchange is quickly completed. The travel time alone today was approximately 3 hours.

Update 16.11.2023, 8:15 am:

Now sign of a problem since the exchange, but also no feedback from anyone who lives there.