Regarding the disruptions on Lnu.se

We are working together with our service provider to analyse the situation and develop a long‑term solution. This may involve both technical changes and adjustments to how traffic is managed.

As a temporary short‑term measure, we are limiting parts of the international traffic to Lnu.se starting on Wednesday 6 May.

The purpose is to reduce the load and ensure more stable access for the majority of our users.

For those of you located abroad

If you are studying from abroad, you can still access the systems by connecting through the university’s VPN service. More information about VPN for students is available here.

Causes of the disruptions

The main cause of the disruptions is a significant global increase in automated web traffic. This is a global phenomenon currently affecting a large number of public authorities and companies worldwide. AI‑driven search traffic has increased globally by 30 percent in a very short time.

We believe a growing share of this traffic comes from AI‑based tools that:

• collect information from websites (so‑called “crawlers”)

• retrieve content in real time to provide instant answers in various AI services

This means our websites are now receiving far more requests than before, often within very short time intervals.

Our current web solution has a technical limitation in how many simultaneous requests it can handle (so‑called “rate limiting”). This limitation has not previously been an issue, but is now being reached more frequently, resulting in the disruptions users are experiencing.

Our own use of AI‑based search functionality also contributes to the increased load, although it is not the primary cause.

We are aware of the frustration and difficulties this has caused. We fully understand this and sincerely apologise for the problems that have arisen.

We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and will provide continuous updates.

/Peter Bergehamn, Head of IT at Linnaeus University