Core Services

Category: GAC IT

  • What happens when the Mac Admin pushes out an OS upgrade

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    doachs

    Ever wondered what our internet traffic graphs look like when the Mac Administrator tells a whole bunch of computers to download the upgrade to Tahoe? We get a very large spike in #IPv6 traffic, that’s what we get. 🙂 Possibly setting a new record in the process. Interesting that it seems to have split the…

  • Campus Internet Outage – April 8, 2026

    Campus Internet Outage – April 8, 2026

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    doachs

    During the evening of April 7th, a piece of hardware at the ISP that provides our internet connection failed. Because we have redundancy built into our connection, the internet remained reachable from campus. That is until the ISP attempted to replace the failed hardware at about 2:20pm on April 8th. For some reason the replacement…

  • ActivityPub Testing

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    doachs

    After just installing the ActivityPub plugin to our WordPress server, I thought it would be fun to try a test post and see if I am able to read this elsewhere in the Fediverse, specifically from my Mastodon account. If all goes well, I should see it pop up in my feed shortly, which would…

  • Can you tell from this graph when the Call of Duty update was released?

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    doachs

    Apparently there are quite a few Call of Duty players on campus. The graph over to the right shows the internet bandwidth usage of the college over the past 24 hours.  The thin dark blue line is the data we downloaded the previous day. The video game “Call of Duty” released a rather large update…

  • 2019 Commencement Time Lapse Video

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    doachs

    June 1, 2019 was a beautiful day to hold the commencement ceremony outside.  To get a peek at all that goes on during this event, take a look at this time lapse video where we compressed the entire day down into a one minute video.

  • Campus Internet Connection Bandwidth Increase

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    doachs

    Due to the ever increasing demand for internet bandwidth it was once again time for GTS to upgrade our internet connection before spring semester kicks off.  For the past few years the campus has had 2Gbit/s of bandwidth to the internet and 1Gbit/s to Internet2.  While this was a huge amount of capacity a few…

  • WiFi Upgrades in the Library

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    doachs

    We know that one of the busiest times of the year for the library is coming up soon and in preparation for that we have completed an upgrade of the library’s WiFi network. Not only did we swap out the older access points for the latest model but we also added seven additional access points…

  • Wireless Upgrades to Confer / Vickner Hall

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    doachs

    The WiFi network in Confer / Vickner Hall has received a significant upgrade as part of our ongoing project to improve the WiFi network in the academic buildings on campus.  Last year the building had 13 aging WiFi access points.  This summer we replaced those access points with 22 of the latest generation WiFi access…

  • Outdoor WiFi added to Johns Family Courtyard

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    doachs

    A common request we receive at GTS is to expand the WiFi coverage in the outdoor spaces on campus.  As part of an effort to improve the WiFi all around Gustavus, we have installed a new outdoor WiFi access point on the wall between the Courtyard Cafe and the Johns Family Courtyard.  So this fall…

  • DNS and Your Privacy

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    doachs

    On April 1, 2018 Cloudflare released a new DNS service called 1.1.1.1.  One of the primary goals of this service is to allow users to hide their DNS requests from their ISP.   A typical home ISP ( like Comcast, and  Mediacom ) may be logging all the DNS requests you do, selling that information to…