UI: Recent campus internet outage caused by automatic update

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Lang
10/19/24

We now know the cause of the widespread internet outage on the University of Iowa campus earlier this month.

UI ITS Director of Strategic Communication Nicole Dahya told The Daily Iowan that the October 6th outage was the result of an automated system update that inadvertently changed the UI’s server configurations.

The outage took down internet access across the UI campus and multiple campus IT systems.

The UI ITS website first posted about the outage at 9:26 on the morning of Sunday, October 6th, saying officials were aware of a problem affecting several systems across campus. The announcement said teams from the Healthcare Information Systems and ITS were working to restore the services.

An update just before 2pm said the issue was particularly affecting off-campus users, and no time of restoration was provided.

The internet was restored at around 5:30pm.