Continued Loss of Web Conference Robustness

[Hoag]

For the last few weeks we have experienced continuing problems with the web conference software. In almost every session (over the past 5-6 conferences in our class) everyone gets dropped at least once. Generally it comes back quickly, but once it took several minutes.

Today the session dropped, and when it restarted I could hear clearly but could no longer be heard by others. Not a good thing for the instructor, and note that I was connected by telephone (landline). We never found a solution, and a co-instructor had to cover the rest of the class.

Also throughout the session peoples voices were breaking up. This was happening both for those connected by phone and those by computer.

This is my second report of problems, and it is not getting better. Really quite unacceptable level of system performance right now.

 

[Susan Ottmann]

I also reported yesterday problems with getting dropped the last few Wednesday mornings (our sessions are 9-10am Wed.).  I have not experienced similar problems with Thursday evening sessions.

[Mark Millard]

Kevin and Wayne,

Thank you both for reporting these issues with Blackboard Ultra.  I agree that this is unacceptable, and I am forwarding your issues to both UW campus service leads, as well as Blackboard Ultra support.  Hopefully they can have an answer to address these connecting issues.

For any others instructors or students that are experiencing issues, could you please post to this discussion forum thread so that I can collect the details and also forward these on to service leads and Blackboard support.

Thanks,
~Mark

EPD Online Support Team

[Hoag]

Thank you Mark,

Regarding your last paragraph I want to make sure I’ve been clear. These instances are not ones of an individual instructor or student losing connection – we’ve always had those. What is happening now is that the entire conference goes down; everyone loses connection at the same time, and you can watch them come back on line one by one as it is restored. I told the students I would report this, so I don’t expect any of the other students or instructors in my class to add to the discussion.

Kevin

[Mark Millard]

Thanks Kevin.  Yes, that is clear to me, and I’m make sure to pass this on that it certainly appears to be a system issue, not individual users or connections.

My call to action, was primarily for any instructors / students in our other courses or programs who have experienced similar issues.  I am working on reporting the two issues we’ve received, from you and Wayne’, but the more testimonials I can pass along the better, and can quicken the response I get from Campus and/or Blackboard.

Best,
~Mark

[Mark Millard]

Hi Kevin, Wayne and others:

I wanted to update you all on this issue. We reported these issues to the UW campus service lead (and to Blackboard).  We get quicker uptake when we go through our campus service leads.  Here is a response our service leads got back from Blackboard late last week.  Note that they are continuing to press Blackboard on a quicker resolution to their current server load balancing setup, which is troubling at best.  But at the very least, the following may explain what you’re experiencing?

 

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Blackboard noted that some sessions were migrated from one server to another server during those peak usage times. Users would have been all disconnected and reconnected automatically. This occurred because of load balancing the servers. In this case another session had grown to a large size which necessitating moving other sessions to another server, including some of the those mentioned. It’s something they are aware is disruptive to sessions when it occurs. Their roadmap for next year does include work to move a session seamlessly in the future, meaning users won’t even notice the change of server, but they noted that this is a big project.

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I hope that you don’t have to, but please keep us in the loop if you continue to have issues so that we can pass these on.

Thanks,
~Mark
EPD Online Support Team

 

[Hoag]

Thank you for the update, Mark. Their explanation certainly makes sense. They do need to understand that it is far from seamless as it currently occurs. There is no advance warning and whomever is speaking doesn’t realize for several seconds that they’ve lost everyone. In all but one of the cases I experienced the service appeared to have been fully restored within 15 to 20 seconds. One case took several minutes.

For what it’s worth it sounds like the problem lies with sessions where they don’t know how many people will attend. That sounds like a fixable problem with a bit of better planning and restriction on their end.

Kevin

[Mark Millard]

Hi All,

I just wanted to pass along an update that I received from your UW campus Blackboard Ultra service lead regarding the reported outages that were occurring in Nov/Dec 2018. They seem fairly confident that a bug that they found and fixed, may have been the cause of the outages and service issues.  Please do let me know if any further issues are experienced once the Spring 2019 semester begins so that we can report back.

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From: Peter Mann
Date: Thursday, January 3, 2019 at 3:24 PM
To: Mark Millard
Cc: EPD Online Support, James Mckay, Dan Voeks
Subject: Re: Connection and audio problems reported with Blackboard Ultra
 
Good afternoon and Happy New Year, Mark!

Our contacts at Blackboard confirmed the successful deployment of a maintenance update to Collaborate Ultra that occurred on Thursday, December 20th. The update included a fix to a condition whereby a session server would crash when sessions were migrated to a new session server due to load balancing.  It is my understanding that this was the cause of the events when moderators and participants were suddenly disconnected and reconnected during the course of a session, which happened on several occasions.

While this is good news, we have no practical way to test whether the problematic behavior will reoccur, that is until the winter break is over. And, as is such, the ticket was closed with Blackboard Support, though it would be a simple process to re-open and escalate if events should dictate these actions.

Let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or if you find that the issue has not been fixed.

 

Kind regards,
Peter

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