As of about 5 a.m. this morning, Internet is back on with no interruptions across the state after last night’s difficulties.
Just before midnight Tuesday evening, all of Merit Network’s Internet users had difficulty connecting to the Internet as a result of an issue with a router at a Merit facility in Chicago. Merit Network is an Internet service provider in Michigan serving the state’s public universities.
According to Elwood Downing, the vice president of member relations, communications and services for Merit, Merit’s engineers identified and fixed the problem early this morning, getting Internet back on at 4:52 a.m.
Downing said the engineers determined the issue was a packeting forwarding problem with the way the packets were being handled on a router. Traffic was then directed to a different path and different equipment, according to a press release.
“Right now we’re looking through the logs to determine in more detail what it was,” he said, adding they will then determine whether it was a software or hardware issue.
Last night, students at MSU, the University of Michigan and Central Michigan University reported having problems with the Internet.
Downing said this is only the second time Merit’s Internet has gone down in the past 20 years.
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