By: Travis Archie
After about 30 hours of no service, the internet crisis at Gardner Webb has been temporarily fixed. Around 5 p.m. Wednesday, Internet access slowly became available to faculty devices and then to the student devices. Now many people have questions about the outage and rumors have developed.
The company that formally supplied Gardner Webb with all its wireless and wired internet services was RST, a fiber optics networking company. Fiber optics are strands of pure glass that are as thin as the human hair. These fibers carry digital data over great distances. This is a newer and faster way of sending data than using traditional copper wire.
Since fiber-optics are new there are still things that are unknown. RST has been around for about two decades and had begun to switch to fiber optics in Mid-March of 2014 to compete with their competition.
RST is stationed in Shelby, N.C. and in 2014 spent, “tens of millions of dollars to set over 3100 miles of fiber optics across North Carolina,” said Chief Executive Dan Limerick to Andrew Kenney of newsobserver.com.
It has hardly even been a full year since the switch to fiber-optics and RST has already encountered a problem. On the RST website under the Technology tab, it explains their 100 Percent Underground Installation procedure.
“Our network is installed in high-density, poly-ethylene conduit – buried underground below gas, electric, water and sewer lines to ensure maximum security, reliability and weather protection,” said the RST Fiber Optics Networking Company.
Many people have asked, “how did this line get cut and who did it?” When searching for answers with RST there was no comment.
When I spoke to RST, they had lost their main server in the datacenter and had to cut over to a new backup system. The outage had nothing to do with a fiber cut.