2025-10-15 Partial Outage in Fichtenweg 1

Around 12:10, one of the two switches at Fichtenweg 1 failed, causing most of the rooms to currently have no internet connection.

 

We are on our way to replace the switch.

Update: since 1:27 pm the house is online again. The priority to upgrade this house has been increased.

13-10-2025 Pestalozzistraße 63

Unfortunately, a switch serving 24 rooms (rooms 101–125, pest63) has failed.

We are using this incident as an opportunity to upgrade your building to our new hardware, which will result in a brief outage for everyone living there.

However, this will not happen until tomorrow (October 14, 2025) at the earliest. As soon as we have a precise time for the hardware replacement, we will update this post.

Update 14/10/2025 7:50 am: This afternoon a quick fix will be done. In the next few days, we will upgrade to the latest MikroTik switches, so you will then have gigabit.

Update 14/10/2025 1:40 pm: Rooms are online again. Upgrade to gigabit will be probably on Sunday.

Update 21/10/2025 8:15 AM: Reboot of the building

Update 21/10/2025 22:54 PM.: Unfortunately, the quick fix broke down at around 8:00 a.m. today. In the evening, I set off to make sure that rooms 101-125 were back online. However, when I unplugged and plugged the master switch back in, it broke, which means that the whole house is now offline. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to fix it tonight, but I’ll take care of it tomorrow right after work. I’ll replace the hardware as mentioned above, and then the building should run smoothly for a good few years. So if everything goes according to plan, you’ll be back online tomorrow evening.

Update 22/10/2025, 9:41 PM.: I have replaced all switches, and the internet should be back up and running throughout Pestalozzistr. 63. While I am still making some best practice changes, there may still be brief outages. Thanks to the switch to new hardware, this dorm now has gigabit internet, which is 10 times faster—however, most of you are using old routers that can only handle 100 Mbit/s, so most of you won’t benefit from this.

2025-10-09 Reutlingen Pestalozzistr. 67

A switch that is serving 24 rooms died today.

Instead of replacing the switch we will upgrade the house to gigabit.

We will be there tonight.

Update

9:30 PM – We are done and everything should be working normally again. If there are any issues still, let us know via the contact form.

2025-07-26 Egilolfstraße 43

There is a defective switch, so the building is offline, as are parts of Egilolfstraße 45.

We are heading out tomorrow to replace the device.

Update 27.07.2025 11:00 AM:
We are currently packing and configuring the switches in Tübingen and will then make our way to Hohenheim. Expected arrival is around 1:00 PM. Since we are also completely replacing the switches at Egilolfstraße 41/43/45, there may be brief outages there as well.

Update 27.07.2025 8:00 PM:
We have finished upgrading all the switches at Egilolfstraße 41/43/45, as well as upgrading the uplink for increased throughput. You should now be able to surf the web normally again. If there are still any issues, please contact us via the contact form.

2025-06-04 Outage Albstadt

At around 03:00, the internet connection of the dorms in Albstadt went down. As the time is pretty even, this could be some kind of planned maintenance work regarding infrastructure outside our control – but nothing was announced to us.

If the problem persists tomorrow, somebody of us has to visit the network room in Albstadt physically.

Update 8:30 AM:There is a major power issue at Poststraße 22/1. Without electricity, our equipment doesn’t work.
Poststraße 22/2 is connected to 22/1, so it is also offline.

Update 7 PM: we are still waiting for power.

Update 2025-06-04 10:30 AM: we are still waiting for power.

Update Friday, 2025-06-06, 8:30 AM:

Unfortunately, there are no new developments. Three circuit breakers are off. When one of them was switched back on, smoke appeared. For safety reasons, the Netz-AK will not touch these breakers or power outlets.

Our network infrastructure has no power and is completely offline. Normally, power supply is not our responsibility – but since nothing has happened so far, we are now checking with the Studierendenwerk to find out if and when an electrician will come for repairs.

If the issue is not fixed today, we will look into other ways to power our devices. At the moment, we cannot say whether that will work.

We, too, are surprised by how long the power outage is lasting and how it affects hot water and the network. We’ll keep you updated.

Update 12:50 PM: Something seems to have been fixed, but some spare parts had to be ordered. Since we only have information from third parties, we are not sharing any details.
We are now looking for a power source to get our switches running again.

Update Saturday, June 7, 11:30 AM:

We got in the car in Tübingen at 8:30 AM and drove to Albstadt because our team member on-site “couldn’t” access the room yesterday.

When we arrived at Poststraße, the tech room was dark. According to our info, there’s no power there. There are no alternative power sources nearby, but we happened to meet an electrician who wanted to fix the lights.

Now we have first-hand information we can share.

On Wednesday, there was an overvoltage, probably from a lightning strike.

The electrician already replaced the fuses on Wednesday and found that our hardware (network switches) was burned out. He informed the caretaker.

So we are not waiting for electricity or a big repair — we just need to install new devices.

We have everything in stock in Tübingen, but we didn’t bring the devices because we thought the only problem was missing power.

We could have replaced everything already on Wednesday, no probem at all.

Someone from our team will go back to Albstadt during Pentecost and install the replacements.

If you’re frustrated, please contact the Studierendenwerk directly…

Update Sunday, June 8, 6:50 PM:

Poststraße 22-2 is already back online, and room by room, the network is coming back.

Big thanks to the person who lent their car to our AK member on site, so the switches could be picked up in Tübingen and brought to Albstadt.

You should all be back online very soon.

2025-04-04 Hohenheim

After we received the first report about connection problems yesterday at 1:35 PM, we started looking into what could be causing it.

One single report usually doesn’t mean a hardware failure on our side, because that would normally affect entire buildings.
During the night, two more people contacted us, so we were able to do more testing this morning.
From one of them, we couldn’t get any useful info because their hardware is very old, and the third person didn’t reply anymore.

At around 3:00 PM today, something seems to have happened that made the issue worse. Luckily, more people have reached out since then, so we now believe there really is a problem in Hohenheim.

While I’m writing this, we’re running different tests, and we’re getting ready to drive from Tübingen to replace the device if needed.

If your Wi-Fi issues are caused by your own old hardware, you’re welcome to live with it.
Everyone else shouldn’t have any problems – please always contact us right away if you do, so we can fix it.

Around 5:30 PM, replaced an old fiber module in Egilolfstraße just to be sure.
Did some more tests, but no results.
Probably witnessed an outage, but not sure.
Installed hardware for diagnostics.
Will run tests overnight and check again tomorrow.

Update Saturday 6 pm:

The diagnosis took the whole day.
We can confirm the outages on all 13 connections that were reported.
All our devices say they are working fine. The older part we replaced yesterday was probably not the cause, because the problem is still there.
That’s frustrating.
We are getting ready to go on site in Hohenheim tomorrow morning. We will either try to find the problem by checking everything again or replace all the equipment in building 49/51 and the connection to building 53.

Update Sunday 8:30 am: Planned arrival in Hohenheim at 10:30 am.

Update from the car on the way to Tübingen (Sunday 5:00 PM):
We replaced all possible hardware.
Egilolfstraße 49 and 51 now have gigabit internet.
Feel free to try our speed test: https://netz-ak.de/intern-speedtest/

We hope this fixed the problem – even though we couldn’t find the exact cause.

2025-03-26 Heuberger-Tor-Weg

In Heuberger-Tor-Weg 15 two switches probably did not survive the power outage.

If we can not revive them, we will exchange them today.

Update: The replacement of the broken switch was completed at 7:24 PM. Everyone is online again.

Thank you to the kind resident for the friendly words and the tea you gave me!

2025-03-26 Outages with connection to the current Tübingen power outage

There is currently no internet in Heuberger-Tor-Weg – this is almost certainly to do with the power cut here. It could be that the internet is also down in many other halls of residence. Our server room also seems to have no power at the moment and is only being kept running by the UPS, which will also run out of power at some point.

Power failure: https://www.swtue.de/netze/netzinformationen/aktuelle-meldungen.html

Update 12:05 PM: There is power in the server room, so we won’t suffer a total outage.

Update 1.36 pm: Welcome back online!

Network Outage Nürtingen 13.03.2025

Currently, our network devices at Sudetenstrasse 125, 127, and 129 are unreachable.

We are currently investigating the cause.

Update 3:42 PM: During construction work, a fiber that is required for our internet access was cut. It looks like the problem can be fixed until the evening.

Update 6:30 PM: The dorms should be online again.