Category: Planning

2025-11-30 Maintenance Upgrade Hibuka

Avatar photoHeinrich Griesenbach on

At the Hibuka in the French Quarter, we were able to recruit an Erasmus student for our working group for last week.

Many buildings in the quarter currently do not yet have gigabit connections in the rooms. We are using this opportunity to upgrade the local infrastructure.

Wankheimer Täle 1 forms the central uplink of the French Quarter as well as the buildings in Eugenstraße. During the work, there may be temporary internet outages there.

Our team will start on Sunday, 30 November 2025, at around 10 a.m. and will work its way from building to building. Anyone who would like to have a look at our network technology is warmly invited to stop by.
We will update this blog post regularly throughout the day.

Update, Saturday 6 p.m.: We will only start installation work tomorrow at 12 o’clock.

Update Sunday 1 p.m.: we are starting in Wankerheimer Täle 1

Update Sunday 5:20 p.m.: Provenceweg 1 and Landkutschersweg 4+6 are pretty much finished.

There will still be a short outage of the entire buildings when we switch the fiber connection from 1 to 10 gigabit.

Update Sunday 7 p.m.: The switch to 10 gigabit could not take place due to excessive attenuation on the fiber. The outage lasted 1.5 hours, longer than expected, because diagnostics and rollback were necessary.

2025-03-21 big changes on core

Avatar photoHeinrich Griesenbach on

On March 21, 2025, we will finally install our new MikroTik Cloud Core Router – CCR2216.
All important devices in our network have names. Our new core switch from MikroTik is called “Corey McRotik.”

As the central core switch, it connects all our network segments.

Many people don’t realize that we run a real, independent network.
All student dormitories in Geislingen an der Steige, Hohenheim, Nürtingen, Reutlingen, Albstadt, and Sigmaringen are connected to us in Tübingen and meet here at Fichtenweg 5.
(This is also why we cannot simply add dormitories that are connected via DSL, like those in Rottenburg, to our network.)

During the upgrade, all dormitories will go offline one or multiple times for a short period, depending on how we need to switch the fiber optic connections.

We chose Friday during the semester break to minimize disruptions for students and avoid interfering with the Studierendenwerk.

Our homepage is no longer hosted on a server at Fichtenweg—it is now hosted externally.
The main reason for this change was a series of power outages in our server room, which not only took all dormitories offline but also made our homepage unavailable.
We don’t expect frequent power outages, but with this change, we can provide more reliable updates in case of problems.

In short:

No need to worry, no emails, and please do not report the planned outage on Friday at 6:00 PM—we are aware of it.
We will be in the server room, literally holding cables in our hands.
We will update this message once we are finished.
If you still have problems after restarting at least one router, please contact us immediately via the contact form.
We will stay on-site for a few more hours to fix configuration issues or, if necessary, undo changes to keep the internet downtime as short as possible.

If you are interested in large networks, feel free to contact us (contact form: Mitmachen).
No prior knowledge is needed!
This year, we will replace switches in over 100 buildings—it’s manual work, so every helping hand is welcome.

If technology is not your strength, but you still want to help, we would really appreciate it.
As you can see from this not-so-perfect text, we could also use someone who can write better texts, design announcements, or simply organize tasks.

Right now, we are mainly active in Tübingen, but we already have one person in Hohenheim who recently joined to help on-site.
We really appreciate people outside of Tübingen because you can reach locations faster.

For example, you could help someone in a dorm with router issues, check if a construction crew accidentally cut a fiber optic cable, or look in the basement to see if a power outage is causing a network problem. All of this is much more difficult for our volunteer team in Netz-AK to handle from Tübingen.

6:16 pm update: after 4 minutes of downtime we finished. If anything is different for you, contact us!

Heads-Up: Friday, 06/12/2024 – New switch, new luck! 🚀

Avatar photoHeinrich Griesenbach on

Hi everyone,

It’s time! On Friday, December 6, 2024, we’re finally installing the new generation of switches in the dorms on Konrad-Adenauer-Strssße. 🎉

What does this mean for you?
During the installation – about 3 hours – the dorms will be completely offline. No connection, no internet, no streaming, sorry! 🙈

Please don’t contact us during this time or ask how much longer it will take. It’ll take as long as it takes – but we promise to work as fast as we can! 💪

What’s new?
The new MikroTik switches are a test to see if they can replace our old Alcatel devices. Small tests went smoothly, but now it’s time for the real thing. Fingers crossed that everything works as planned! 🤞

Thanks for your patience and understanding – after the update, you’ll be the first to enjoy the new speed! 🖥️⚡

Your volunteers of the Netz-AK 🌐

Update: Saturday, 3:05 am we are back in Fichtenweg and configuring the last minor things. (That were very long three hours 😃 )

Update: Sunday, ~9 pm. we are replacing some modules and hope to connect the dormitories in Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse at 10 Gigabit to Fichtenweg 5.

2024-08-21 Muenzgasse 7

Avatar photoHeinrich Griesenbach on

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.

Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse SoSe 2024

Avatar photoHeinrich Griesenbach on

As announced on January 13, we are now using our standard configuration on Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse, after extending it for an additional month.

The change will prevent access points, repeaters, and incorrectly configured routers from using up too many IP addresses, which can deny other residents access to the internet.

Instructions on how to configure routers can always be found in our tutorials.

Maintenance work announcement Viktor-Renner-Straße

Malte on

On Thursday, April 18, starting around 6:30 PM, we will finally be able to equip our dormitories in Viktor-Renner-Straße with more modern technology.
For the residents, this means they will be able to use gigabit internet in their rooms afterwards.
For us as Netz-AK the upgrade also brings us major advantages in the management of our network. The switches that were previously installed in Viktor-Renner-Straße are the very last to not support various standard features and needed to be configured very differently from the rest of our infrastructure, hindering any automation efforts.
We expect the installation to take about 3 hours, meaning you will probably have unrestricted internet access again from 9:30 PM.

Update 2024-04-23: After we were initially only able to replace the switches at Viktor-Renner-Straße 2 last Thursday, we have completed all maintenance work at 4 today. If you still have problems with your internet, please contact us individually using our contact form! This is the only way we can identify the individual problems and help you effectively, because the sources of error can be very different.

As everywhere else in our network, the maximum number of IP addresses assigned in Viktor-Renner-Straße is now basically limited to 1 per connection. However, you don’t have to buy a new router now if, for example, you have previously operated a WiFi repeater and therefore need several IP addresses. For all such connections that we could identify, we have temporarily relaxed this restriction. Let us know if we missed one.

Surprise

Avatar photoHeinrich Griesenbach on

Just now, at 10:25 AM, the Studierendenwerk contacted us because the people moving into Schwerzstrasse 2 apparently don’t have internet.

This doesn’t surprise us, since we weren’t informed until just now that the dormitory is finished being renovated and is now being moved into.

We can’t fix this immediately, but we should be able to do it by tomorrow afternoon, because Lucas and I will probably spend our vacation in the basement of Schwerzstrasse.

Until then, we can’t do anything for you. Use the time to get to know your new neighbours. Celebrate a little and pick up a book, the old-fashioned way.

We look forward to welcoming you to the network tomorrow.

Fiber optic advertisement for the dorm is retro.

Avatar photoHeinrich Griesenbach on

Imagine you’re living in a student dorm that has had fiber optic since 1974. And then, in 2024, you suddenly get an advertisement for the “soon arrival of fiber optic” in your mailbox.

Great!

If everything goes well, by this year, every room will be equipped with a synchronous gigabit connection, meaning 1,000 megabits of both upload and download.

That’s at least our goal for the 20th anniversary of our Network Work-group

Maintenance Work Announcement week 3

Avatar photoHeinrich Griesenbach on

In week 3, which is from January 15 to January 21, some maintenance work is scheduled.

Hohenheim

The maintenance work starting on Friday will be long and unpleasant for the people in Hohenheim.
The fiber optic lines in Hohenheim to get extended to be used in a different location because of the renovations.
Without the fiber optic line, there will be no internet there.

The work will be carried out by a specialist company and is scheduled to start on Friday morning, which is January 19.
The work will take a long time, so we announce a complete internet outage in all student dormitories in Hohenheim from Friday morning to Saturday noon.

If it’s done faster, please avoid sending us messages all day. It won’t speed things up.
The company will complete their work as quickly as possible, and we will reconnect the fiber optics.

Tuebingen, Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse

On Thursday, January 18, starting around 5:30 PM, we will finally be able to equip our dormitories in Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse with modern technology.
For the residents, this means they will be able to use gigabit internet in their rooms afterwards.
Since we haven’t been able to implement the exclusive use of routers in Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse due to technical reasons, we will not enforce this immediately but only from the start of the summer semester (April 1, 2024).
We expect the installation to take about 3 hours, meaning you will probably have unrestricted internet access again from 9:00 PM.

Tuebingen, Schimpf-WG

There will be a maximum half-hour interruption in internet access at the Schimpf-WG. We had announced this work several times before but could never implement it due to problems accessing our hardware in the neighboring building. We cannot say exactly when this will be, but it will happen some evening between Monday and Thursday.