In the last week, several network outages affected all of UMSL’s offsite locations, including UMSL at Grand Center, home to St. Louis Public Radio. The outages disrupted the station’s live stream capabilities, as well as the station’s computer networks and phone lines. Several public school districts, libraries, and other professional spaces served by the vendor also lost networking capabilities.
Director of Technology Daryl McQuinn said the loss resulted from an internet vendor’s equipment failure. Though the station has used the service with very few issues over the years, McQuinn said his department is now working with UMSL’s IT department “to get an additional vendor who can provide a complete second path of data to our facility, a step that would make the station’s infrastructure more robust.”
While the outage did not affect newsroom operations, it did disrupt the live stream to listeners in Quincy, Rolla and Lebanon, as well as those who tried to stream the station’s programs on the St. Louis Public Radio and NPROne smartphone apps and voice-activated devices.