Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

Universities in Yorkshire in the U.K. were hit by a massive Internet outage recently, which left thousands of students all over the area without access to the Internet, according to The Mirror. Besides using the Internet to work on term papers, students rely on the Net to provide recreational entertainment just as much as they use it to communicate with friends and family. The outage of the “Janet” network, which provides Internet services to universities across the country, not only resulted in the loss of Internet services but also downed several university websites as well.

Engineers began working on the outage almost immediately after it began. Janet's engineers were also sent to the University of Leeds and Leeds Becket University to inspect the physical equipment in person, and around four hours later the network reported that the problem had been fixed for most universities. However, this fix was mostly in relation to ensuring that the university websites were back online, and the organization announced that most Internet connections “should be considered at risk until further notice.”

Though Janet initially had trouble identifying what caused the Internet outage, the group eventually linked a severed network cable in Leeds to the event. When construction equipment accidentally tore through one of the area's fiber optic cables, it triggered a brief power outage in the main servers. Even a momentary outage can cause the loss of massive amounts of data, and as is evident by the loss of service in Yorkshire, the potential consequences could be disastrous.

One way that the Janet Network could have avoided this outage is if they had been using Minuteman's Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) to take over when the primary power supply went out. Minuteman products offer inexpensive backup power solutions that automatically take over in the event of a power outage, while some are even able to backup sensitive data. Had Janet been using one of these options, it's likely that the Internet outage could have been avoided entirely.