The launch of UTSC’s new wireless network was marred by an 18-hour network shutdown February 24.

The new network, aptly named “UofT,” which cost $866,000 and took 18 months to set up, is supposed to give students higher-speed internet, a quota increase from two GB per week to five GB, and greater coverage for 95 per cent of indoor spaces, including residences and heavily-used outdoor areas.

Unlike UTORwin, a browser-based login isn’t required each time an individual connects to UofT.

Senior network administrator Glenn Atwood said the shutdown had nothing to do with the new network.

“Obviously a network outage of 18 hours is unacceptable, not acceptable to us and not really acceptable to the student population, staff, and faculty,” he said, adding that  the school is already coming up with a plan to ensure this does not happen again.

The severed fibre optics cable that caused UTSC’s wireless network to shut down was deemed an accident.

“[There’s] nothing we can do about that, unfortunately. [It] wasn’t a planned outage of any sorts, it was just something that happened,” Atwood said.

He could not say why the cable was cut but that it occurred four kilometres away from the campus, inside one of the Internet Service Provider’s substations.

According to him, the reason it took 18 hours to resolve the issue was because the school does not have control over the ISP. Cogeco Data Services, the campus’ ISP, had to dispatch a team to locate the break in the very long cable.

“It takes them some time to find out where the [break] is and fix the problem,” Atwood said.

Under the Network Access Redundancy Project, UTSC will partner with another institution to back it up in case of network shutdown. If UTSC’s network is down they will route the traffic over the other institution’s network and vice versa.

“That will provide some much needed resiliency so that we don’t have that long extended outage again,” Atwood said.

Atwood hopes another shutdown won’t occur in the future but says that “you can never tell, because these are unplanned outages.”

Students are encouraged to switch from using UTORwin as, according to UTSC’s website, it’s “slower, less secure and not available at all locations.”