Schools Off-line After Hardware Failure Strikes the London Grid for Learning

The London Grid for Learning (LGfL), which supplies high-speed network and ICT services to over a million students at Schools across the city, has suffered a major core network outage this morning following what has been described as a “significant serious of hardware failures.”

Support sites, email and phone services have also been hit by the problem. The LGfL is a non-profit organisation and charitable trust that was established in 2001 to offer cost-effective ICT to schools across the capital. The contract to provide broadband to around 2,500 Schools under this setup is held by Virgin Media Business (since 2011).

Virgin offers a “high-speed, dedicated and secure” Public Service Network (PSN) platform to schools in the city, which connects up to 3,000 unique locations, over a million students and all 33 London local authorities. Unfortunately this network appears to have suffered a major failure this morning, which has caused chaos on the first day back after a weekend break.

The CEO of LGfL, John Jackson, this morning confirmed that the “Core has gone down. It looks like a significant serious of hardware failures. We are all hands to the pump trying to resolve this.” John also added that their “Atomwide phone systems are affected so we can only apologise for the lack of information getting through.”

The good news is that as we type this article the official LGfL twitter account has been updated to say that the service is now returning to normal after several hours of confusion.

Apparently a “full review” is now being planned to “ensure improved future service.” However a few schools are still reporting problems, although it’s possible that some kit may need a reboot before the connection returns to life.