Danielle Everson
Asst. Managing Editor
dveverson@valdosta.edu

VSU experienced some Internet technical difficulties on and off campus Tuesday afternoon due to the construction of the in progress Student Union.
A fiber optic cable that connects the VSU campus to Peach net was cut while installing a new sewer line for the new facility.
Websites such as Google, Facebook and Myspace were unable to connect due to the interruption at 2:42 p.m. Tuesday afternoon.
The Board of Regent’s provided Peachnet fiber that connects campus computers to these sites was not able to be fixed until early Wednesday morning.
“Technicians did not start working on the problem until 6 a.m. this morning restoring the connection at 12:20 p.m. this afternoon,” Joe Newton, Director of Information Technology, said.
VSU’s local connection to the main webpage and WebCT were however still up and running on main campus because the campus fiber was not damaged.
As students on-campus dealt with connecting to websites, off-campus users had problems getting on to the Valdosta State webpage and WebCT.
However, off-campus Internet users were informed about connection problems once logging in to VSU’S webpage.
“The Board of Regent’s provided an emergency web service,” Newton said.
Although the outage caused present problems, Newton was enthused about the repair in the future.
“Now that the fiber is repaired, it is less likely to be cut,” Newton said.
According to Newton, cable finding for connecting the campus to Peach Net was done in the past, but apparently a cable was overlooked being the one that was cut.
“We need route diversity for our Peachnet connection,”  Newton said.
Students also had some concerns about the recent outage.
“It definitely was a surprise; it did not affect me personally. For others, it was interesting to see people depend on technology so much,” Josh Perkins, senior management major, said. “Especially the Facebook addicts.”
“It’s been very inconvenient. Especially since a lot of my classes use WebCT for assignments, notes and test,” Ashlie Basham, senior journalism major, said.     “Since midterms are occurring right now, it’s been pretty inconvenient. I’ve been at home and at work trying to log on. It’s a good thing I have a Blackberry so that I could receive my e-mails,” she said.
Ernie Prencke, finance and management major, vented about the situation.
“It was an unfortunate situation out of the student body’s control,” Prencke said. “It also reminded me of life before Facebook. My computer was useless, I turned the thing off.”
To find out more about how VSU’s campus stays connected, visit demo.townware.com or www.usg.edu/peachnet .