On Jan. 31, the Internet failed in Asia, the Middle East and Africa due to undersea cables being damaged. Those areas experienced problems with their businesses, television and phone services. If similar damage occurred to the cable to Madison, causing it to be disabled, UW-Platteville has no back-up Internet connection.

UW-P doesn’t have a redundant connection, which means it only has one main Internet connection to Madison, John Krogman, associate vice chancellor for information services, said. If that one connection gets cut, there is no back up.

“Putting in a redundant line is very expensive and an Internet failure rarely happens,” Krogman said.

There are four main points of presence located in Green Bay, Eau Claire, Madison and Milwaukee, Matthew Nickasch, a sophomore computer science major and student network assistant, said. All the main points of presence have redundant connections. A point of presence is where a lot of links with in- and out-bound connections occur.

UW-P has a single Internet connection off-campus through WISCNET, Krogman said. All UW System schools use WISCNET for their Internet service.

WISCNET is an organization that provides Internet services, Nickasch said. They provide service for big universities, K-12 school districts and municipalities and maintain the infrastructure for Wisconsin.

CenturyTel provides some of the physical cables used to transport the Internet, while WISCNET is the Internet service provider, Jerry Copus, assistant network manager, said. Throughout Wisconsin, different telephone companies allow Internet service companies to transport Internet services on their cables.

“If the Internet failed, was disrupted or cut, WISCNET and CenturyTel would give us their utmost attention to get it fixed, but we would still just have to wait till the cable was repaired,” Krogman said.

If there is a cut between Platteville and Madison, traffic can be rerouted until the cable is fixed, Copus said.

Even if the main cable would be cut between Platteville and Madison, the local connection would still be operational, Krogman said. It depends on where the cut happens as to how UW-P’s Internet is affected.

There can be external cuts, which would be a cut from Platteville to Madison, or an internal cut, where a cable was cut on-campus, Krogman said. The internal connections have multiple pathways, so even if a cable were to fail on-campus not everyone could be affected. If the connection to Madison would be interrupted, anything hosted locally would still be available, Nickasch said. There would still be access to PeopleSoft, the shared1server, the user1server and e-mails only to and from UW-P e-mail accounts. D2L would not be available until the Internet is restored.

“Fortunately, the five and a half years I have been here, we haven’t had one Internet failure,” Krogman said.