Stellenbosch University Makes Bad Judgement Call

On 30 October, 2008, The University of Stellenbosch’s IT department decided to cut the network links between residences. This follows after intermittent network instability issues started occurring, possibly due to network software distributed by students.

The student software, titled “Rooihub” was mostly blamed for the network issues, but no evidence was available to back these claims. The following e-mail was sent to network users the day before network routes were severed:

Date: 29 October 2008

After numerous complaints of an unstable and frequently unavailable network, the Management of Information Technology in collaboration with the Student Council agreed on the following: All the network traffic between residences will be blocked If the cause of the unstable network cannot be identified soon. This is necessary to minimize the load which the assumed ”rooihub” users are causing on the network’s performance. It will also ensure more stable access to central services such as email and WebCT.

There was no other e-mail or warning from the IT department, only this mail that states “rooihub” is suspected of causing problems. In fact, the Stellenbosch University IT department is known for not communicating important network issues to its (paying) users.

The IT department had several alternative options available:

1. E-mail network users and warn them not to make use of “Rooihub” software.
2. Block the UDP port that the software used.
3. Configure switches for better handling of possible packet floods.

The decision to cut inter-residence traffic is severely lamented by network users, and is criticized by  individuals who also note that they should be entitled to a non-crippled service since they pay for it. The poor choice in solving the problem is wholly un-academic and not on par with the standards of first-class tertiary institutions. Limiting network functionality undermines the academic environment and stifles innovation.

Ironically, at time of writing there are several websites, including Wikipedia, which cannot be accessed due to misconfigured proxy settings.

As noted by a former member of the student council: “This is the kind of thing that happens when people see something as a technical problem rather than a political one.” IT’s unfortunate behaviour does nothing but damage to Matie pride.

UPDATE: As of 2 November, 2008, the network is once again unstable and unusable. This is after inter-residence links were severed. This just makes it more probable that the network issues are due to bad configuration or hardware rather than the “rooihub” software.