Last night I took a late evening call from a colleague who was on the road, making a presentation and in need of a visual. No big deal, until I went to pull up the UTMB web site and got the dreaded “server not found” message. My attempt to VPN in and get on our network was equally fruitless. Everything else still seemed OK. Foiled and frustrated, I was tempted to wake a few others to get the scoop. But I had a suspicion that maybe it wasn’t a UTMB issue. There was a switch in service that took place Tuesday, from Roadrunner to Comcast (I get broadband service at home via cable). Sure enough, the disruption in access to UTMB was limited to Roadrunner/Comcast customers, and it lasted a few hours while the routers, widgets and technical gadgets figured out there was a big university and medical center at the end of one of its strings of fiber.
The story has a happy ending. I found an image on the hardrive of my laptop and emailed it off that night using my Google email account. Good ol’ Google. The issue with the ISP was resolved a bit after midnight and it looks like smooth sailing from…uh…hello?…can you still hear me…?