The uni aren’t extending deadlines despite the WiFi crisis

Following yesterday’s cyber attack on the University internet network JANET, the Uni have said the problems “aren’t under their control” and many deadlines weren’t extended as a result.

Services such as MOLE and Google Apps are currently unavailable after JANET, the University’s network provider, went down across the country yesterday morning.

JANET is the network provider used by most of the universities in the country, which have all crashed after an unknown source hacked the server.

Sheffield is just one of the universities that has suffered from the DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack on JANET. There have been issues with the service for days, and the problems are still yet to be resolved.

A spokesperson for the University of Sheffield said: “Unfortunately the problems are not under the university’s control as JANET is an external network.

“Therefore the University of Sheffield cannot resolve the problems we’re experiencing at the moment and it is down to JANET engineers to fix the issue.”

Chaos in the Diamond yesterday

Despite the networking issue, many departments have not extended deadlines, meaning many unlucky people have had to resort to desperate measures to submit their essays.

Danny Norton, an English Langauge and Linguistics student final year, avoided the chaos by making use of Maccy D’s free wifi.

He said: “I headed straight out of the diamond for a chicken nugget happy meal, didn’t get a toy (outrageous I know), and had to Turn It In using the McDonald’s wifi”

Katie Chubb, also an English Language and Linguistics final year, was doing the same piece of coursework and had to abandon her  stint in the library: “’I actually left the IC and went home because the internet’s down and I had an assessment to submit.

“The English department didn’t even know MOLE was down.”

It’s all going to be okay

Biology second years were slightly luckier, after their department postponed today’s exam by a week.

Sam Whelan, a biology second year, told The Tab: “My APS240 exam has had to be postponed by a week because the exam uses Mole for the questions, and we need access to the course material through Mole as well”

“The exam was meant to be today (9th Dec) but has been moved to next Wednesday, which I don’t really mind but I just want it done now, but these network issues could really affect people’s grades if the uni doesn’t extend deadlines for people who can’t hand in coursework.”