An upgrade to campus firewalls will disrupt network services the morning of Sunday, October 1, advises Information Technology Services. Firewalls prevent unauthorized access to computer systems.

The upgrade will mean a smoother, quicker Internet experience for clients on campus, says Kevin Macnaughton of IT Services.

“Our old firewalls have reached maximum capacity and struggle to service the campus when the network is busy,” he says. “These new devices are the newest generation of hardware from our security vendor.”

The upgrade will provide:

• increased throughput, nearly four times greater than the old units;
• higher speeds, supporting connections up to 40Gbps; and
• new capabilities, such as cloud-sourced security checks.

IT Services will migrate network and Internet connections to the new firewalls starting at 6 a.m. Sunday, interrupting services for up to 4.5 hours while wires are moved and servers and applications are restarted.

All network systems may be affected, says Macnaughton. Blackboard, myUWindsor, and the UWindsor website will be unavailable at some points during the process, which will wrap up by 10:30 a.m.

“We have done our best to schedule the service outage so it minimizes impact to campus,” he says, inviting those with questions or concerns to contact the IT Service Desk at 519-253-3000, ext. 4440.