On Wednesday, November 23, 2016 at 12:25 PM CCS noticed slowness in accessing the Internet. The Network Services team is investigating the issue.
Update November 24, 2016:
The Internet access problems on November 23, 2016 was the result of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. DDoS network traffic is designed to stress networks and servers to the point that they become unavailable. In response, CCS began to aggressively filter network traffic but found that the attacker(s) changed their tactics several times in response.
During the initial stage of the attack people attempting to access the Internet from on campus had difficulty doing so or found access extremely slow. However, anyone off campus was still able to connect to Ryerson’s core services such as the my.ryerson.ca portal.
As Ryerson began aggressively filtering network traffic, a small number of people were no longer able to access Ryerson from off campus.
The attack subsided enough that by approximately 7 PM on November 23 network services were largely restored.
CCS is analysing the attack and is working to improve our network’s resilience.
Update November 25, 2016:
Computing and Communications Services (CCS) has added an additional firewall at Ryerson’s gateway to the Internet. Our goal is to increase our capacity to handle and control larger volumes of network traffic. This should help us better manage distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in the future. This change supplements the earlier addition of a DDoS filtering appliance.
Please accept our apologies for the problems the DDoS attack on November 23 caused.
-Computing and Communications Services