On the first day of senior registration, Monday, the server crashed as soon as registration opened at 9 a.m. and again on Wednesday when juniors tried to register.
Students said they think the crashes are happening because all students in one class are registering at the same time.
Chief Information Officer for Tech Services Dr. Stephen Landry said this arrangement was made due to Hurricane Sandy.
"Due to Hurricane Sandy, the University decided to compress the registration schedule and open registration by class, rather than breaking the registration up further alphabetically as we had done in the past," Landry said.
Landry said the server is supposed to be able to support a lot of users at one time.
"This was unexpected because PirateNet servers are redundant with load balancing, so they are designed to handle a large volume of users," Landry said. "And logs showed that in the recent past, PirateNet had over 2,000 users log in during the course of an hour."
Junior David Kelly said he understands the University is pressed for time, "but it's frustrating" to be locked out of the system, which happened to him when he tried to register.
Landry said more than 400 users tried to log into the server at the same time, creating the crash.
According to Landry, when PirateNet crashes, students still have access to their email and Blackboard page because the system switches over to a "crash protection page."
"Beginning (Wednesday), we've added a link for Banner Registration to that page, so students will be able to register even if PirateNet is not available," Landry said.
Landry added that a link to registration will also be added to the Enrollment Services' Registration page so students will not have to log in through PirateNet to register. He said they are working with PirateNet and Ellucian to create a permanent fix.
Junior Joseph Murgolo said he experienced the crash when he went to register at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, reporting that it was down by 9:01 a.m. He described the process as "absolutely miserable."
"It overloaded at 8:55 a.m. before anything even started," Murgolo said. "Then it crashed and burned by 9:01 a.m."
"The system shut me down right away," Kelly said. "I couldn't get on until after my 10 a.m. class."
Junior Frances Nikolaou said the same thing happened to her, but she was able to register at 10 a.m. when the system was restored.
"I went to go in and it just gave me a black screen," Nikolaou said. "Then I got in and it crashed again."
Senior Maegan Wetherby said she was unable to register on Monday because of a hold on her accounts, but her roommates experienced the same problems of not being let into the server.
Wetherby said she is anxious to see if the server will stay running for when it is her turn to register.
Kelly said he expected the system to crash and expects "it's going to crash all week."
Lindsay Rittenhouse can be reached at lindsay.rittenhouse@student.shu.edu.
