Phishing Emails
June 16, 2008

Lately, there have been several phishing emails sent out to the community requesting information on behalf of the University's IT department or Webmail administrators. These emails are fake and designed for you to provide information that should not be divulged. Please, never provide your username and password information to anyone. If you have provided your information to anyone, please change your passwords as soon as you can. If you need assistance, please contact FDU's University Technical Assistance Center(UTAC) at extension 8822 or 973-443-8822 if you are located off campus. I will enclose a copy of the latest email version that we have seen. All the different variants I have seen thus far have the same flavor as what I am enclosing below, but do look different. Official emails from IT will usually have the a Tech Alert or FDU-FYI header. This is no guarantee the email is legitimate, but the reasonableness of the request plus the header should be evaluated before a response is sent. If you are in doubt, contact the UTAC and they will get you an official answer as to the whether the email is legitimate or not. I am sorry to bother you with yet another email but this phishing email looked so real, an official statement was necessary.

For more general information on phishing please review our website: http://isweb.fdu.edu/computing/phishing.html

FDU Biweekly Summer Maintenance Schedule
June 6, 2008

Please be aware that our regularly scheduled bi-weekly server maintenance has been changed due to this summer's shutdown days. On Wednesday June 11th, we will be conducting the first rescheduled summer backup. The maintenance for the servers contained in the Bancroft Hall Datacenter will begin promptly at 5PM and should continue until approximately 8:30PM. Subsequent maintenance occurring between June 18th and July 25th, will be performed on Thursday nights, beginning promptly at 5:00 PM and ending at approximately 8:30 PM. The aforementioned backups will affect the Alpha system. Our normal schedule of conducting backups between 5PM and 8:30 PM on Friday evenings will resume on August 8th.

Network Maintenance
May 6, 2008

On the evening of Thursday 5/15, between the hours of 11PM and 1AM, University Systems and Security will be upgrading network equipment. During this time frame, users on the Metropolitan and Florham campuses, as well as the Monmouth County Graduate Center, will experience an Internet outage.

In addition, all inter-campus links will be down. As a result, users on the Florham, Metropolitan and Vancouver campuses, as well as the Monmouth County Graduate Center will not be able to access servers based on any other campus.

Network Maintenance
March 24, 2008

On the evening of Thursday 3/27, between the hours of 11PM and 2AM, network maintenance will be performed in Dickinson Hall. During this three hour time frame, users located in Dickinson Hall will experience network downtime.

Network Maintenance
March 10, 2008

On Tuesday 3/11, between the hours of 11PM and midnight, emergency network maintenance will be performed in Dickinson Hall. During this time frame, users located in Dickinson Hall will experience an approximately 30 minute network downtime period.

Temporary Service Interruption
January 14, 2008

Late yesterday evening University Systems and Security experienced a technical issue with our Storage Area Network. As a result, multiple University systems including Webmail, Novell, and the FDU website were rendered temporarily unavailable. The problem was related to a hardware anomaly, and at this point all systems have been fully restored to operational status.

Intercampus Link Downtime
October 12, 2007

Fairleigh Dickinson University has experienced a downtime of the intercampus network link between the Metropolitan Campus and the College at Florham. As a result, users at the College at Florham have been unable to access resources based on the Teaneck campus for a short time this afternoon. There has been a continuous effort by FDU IT to address this issue promptly. We have currently resolved this problem temporarily, however in order to resolve this problem permanently, we will be replacing this hardware on Monday, October 15 at 11:00pm. We understand the inconvenience that this downtime causes for our community and we appreciate your understanding.

System Downtime
September 19, 2007

On Friday September 21st, between 11pm and midnight, FDU Systems and Security will be reconfiguring network equipment to provide increased data capacity for the FDU community. This procedure will result in a loss of Internet connectivity for both the Metropolitan Campus and the College at Florham for the duration of the upgrade. Additionally, users based on the College at Florham will lose access to all resources based on the Metropolitan Campus. This includes but is not limited to Novell, Datatel, Alpha, and Library systems.

Additionally, FDU's Internet Service Provider will be conducting equipment maintenance on Saturday September 22nd. The work is expected to last approximately one hour and will occur between the hours of midnight and 6AM. While this work is being conducted, both campuses are expected to lose Internet connectivity. Please be aware that FDU has no control over this downtime. Our ISP is working towards redundancy so that in the future, maintenance of this nature does not result in downtime.

System Downtime
August 31, 2007

On Sunday September 16th, between the hours of 11AM and 5PM, FDU Systems and Security will be conducting maintenance on the disk storage system in the Bancroft Hall datacenter. This is the rescheduled date for the maintenance originally planned for August 16th.

Services provided by the FDU Library System, E-mail system and Teaneck Novell servers will be unavailable for the duration of the above procedure. Affected services include wireless Internet access, LDAP, VPN, Blackboard, WebCampus, and access to streaming media. FDU websites such as webmail.fdu.edu and the departmental websites will be inaccessible. FDU's primary website, www.fdu.edu, will be either partially or completely unavailable.

Internet2 Outage
July 11, 2007

Fairleigh Dickinson University will experience an outage of Internet2 connectivity on Friday July 13th between the hours of 10AM and 11AM. Internet2 refers to the high bandwidth Internet backbone used by some educational and research communities. It is our expectation that this outage will have a minimal effect on the FDU community. In most instances, sites that use Internet2 will automatically utilize the standard Internet path during the outage. However, a small number of sites may be unavailable for the duration of this outage.

Summer Maintenance Schedule
June 8, 2007

Please be aware that our scheduled bi-weekly maintenance of the Alpha Server has been changed due to the University's summer shutdown schedule. On Thursday June 14th, we will be conducting the first rescheduled summer backup. The maintenance will begin promptly at 8AM and should continue until approximately 11AM. Subsequent maintenance occurring between June 28th and July 27th, will be performed on Thursday nights, beginning promptly at 5:00 PM and ending at approximately 8:00 PM. Our normal schedule of conducting system maintenance between 5:00 PM and 8:30 PM on Friday evenings will resume on August 10th.

Desirable E-mail may be present in you SPAM folder
April 15, 2007

On Saturday April 14th, we became aware that our SPAM vendor had on Wednesday April 11th, introduced a rule into our E-mail system which caused E-mail from some senders to some FDU recipients be considered and treated as SPAM. As a result, some legitimate E-mail was delivered to the intended recipients FDU-Tagged-Spam folder instead of the recipients Inbox. (This can include FDU user to FDU user Email as well.) Please double check your FDU-Tagged-Spam folder to make sure that you didn't overlook any important Email that should be in your Inbox, but was mis-delivered to your FDU-Tagged-Spam folder.

We automatically receive updates of SPAM rules as often as every two hours and generally they don't cause a problem. Unfortunately in this case the vendor didn't fix this problem until after we notified them of the problem on Saturday. This problem affected only a portion of the E-mail sent between Wednesday and late Saturday night.

FDU Internet Outage
March 29, 2007

Fairleigh Dickinson University will be conducting a major network upgrade as we migrate to the new NJ Edge statewide network. In order for this work to be completed, Internet connectivity will be interrupted between the hours of 7AM and 9AM on Thursday March 29th. During this time period, individuals outside of the University will not be able to access any University based web sites or services. While on campus during this time period, people will be able to access FDU servers and services but will not be able to connect to any services outside of FDU, specifically Blackboard and most of the University's web site will be unavailable.

As many of you are aware, the department of Systems and Security usually schedules network downtime overnight or on the weekends. Unfortunately, since this upgrade is dependent upon outside parties including Verizon and possibly ARIN, we are forced to conduct this upgrade during a time period closer to regular business hours. We apologize for this inconvenience and every effort will be made to minimize this downtime.

System Downtime
March 2, 2007

On Thursday March 8th, between the hours of 5AM and 8AM, FDU Systems and Security will be conducting maintenance of equipment contained in the Bancroft Hall datacenter. This will be the first of a three-stage procedure required for replacing and upgrading a faulty piece of equipment. We will inform the community as soon as we have the exact dates for the additional, as of yet unscheduled, downtime periods.

The above procedure will impact the services provided by, the FDU Library System, E-mail system and Teaneck Novell servers. Impacted services will include wireless internet access, LDAP services, VPN services, 56k modem connectivity, and access to streaming media. Additionally, websites such as www.fdu.edu, webmail.fdu.edu, webcampus.fdu.edu, and the departmental websites will be inaccessible.

System Downtime
March 1, 2007

On Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 11:00 PM, the University Systems & Security department will be performing maintenance to a number of servers. It is our expectation that work will be completed by approximately 1:30 AM. During this maintenance window the following systems will be unavailable: the University Web Server (www.fdu.edu), all departmental web sites, and the Imagenow server (ImageDB.fdu.edu).

It is our aim to provide the most up to date computing environment possible. As a result, downtime for maintenance and upgrades must be scheduled periodically. We recognize the inconvenience that downtime places on the community and as always it is our goal to minimize service outages to the shortest time frame possible.

Wireless Downtime
February 23, 2007

On Wednesday February 28th, between 7AM and 8AM, FDU Systems and Security will be performing an upgrade to our wireless infrastructure. During this upgrade, wireless access will be unavailable throughout both campuses.

This maintenance is essential for us to maintain the high level of network service that our community has become accustomed to. As always, we will make every effort to minimize the downtime experienced by the FDU community. Thank you for your understanding.

Equipment repair
January 6, 2007

At approximately 7:30 on the morning of Saturday, January 6th, Fairleigh Dickinson University experienced a failure of a core piece of network equipment. This failure resulted in a complete downtime of the FDU network. Work began immediately to troubleshoot this issue and within two hours the network had been temporarily restored.

By 12:30PM, FDU IT staff were able to work with Cisco Systems to procure the necessary hardware required to repair the equipment. At this time, a second period of downtime began to allow for this repair. The work was completely successful and network services were restored by 3PM.

I world like to express my gratitude to the FDU community for their patience as this issue was resolved. Please be aware that all efforts were made to ensure that the downtime was minimized.

Network Maintenance
January 2, 2007

The University Systems & Security (USAS) department will be performing a maintenance procedure at 11:00PM on Thursday, January 4th that will last approximately 15 minutes. During this time, USAS will be moving the electrical connections for equipment providing the University's Internet access as well equipment which provides a link between the two campuses. As a result, during this procedure, the Teaneck campus will have the Internet access interrupted and the Madison campus will not have access to the resources based in the Teaneck campus as well as Internet access. Some of the key Teaneck based services which will be interrupted for all residence halls and offices on the Madison campus include the FDU E-Mail System, web browsing, online gaming, and WebCampus/Blackboard.