Outage

[Moonshine]

Hi

Did anyone else notice a brief outage earlier this afternoon?  Since I don't have back up dial-up, nor any other way of accessing the net, I phoned IDNet to check what the problem was, and it was apparently connected to a couple of major BT outages (surprise!).  What I found refreshing was the fact that upon phoning Support, I received a clear idea of when to expect things to be up and running again, and had no cause to call back, since the service came back within the specified time schedule. 

My point is, I expect things to go wrong from time to time - the world is imperfect, and the internet is no exception - but what I appreciate most is being provided with details of when any issue is likely to be resolved - and that to date seems to have always been the case with IDNet (since I've been with them, at any rate!).  May that type of communication long continue.

[Rik]

You must have been unlucky, Moonshine, I've had no outages - except, that is, at 2am when the UPS powering my router decided to fail! 

[netgem21]

<ignore>

[Ray]

Not down for me but very slow to load the page.

[netgem21]

Not down for me but very slow to load the page.

It's back up for me, but slow as you say - Thanks

[dlorde]

I've had two outages in the last 5 days - today's was around 9:45am.

[David]

Nothing here at all.

There was a major problem for the Stratford and some surrounding areas where 75,000 lines were down due to someonedrilling through BT cables so far I think there is still disruption or no service to 25,000 homes or businesses,traffic lights were also badly afeected.

This may not be in your area but thought I would post it anyway for anyone else

[Moonshine]

Well, I'm in Milton Keynes, so pretty sure it had to be another problem with BT.  Unless of course it was Stony Stratford!!! 

[David]

  I think you will have missed it

[Rik]

Well, I'm in Milton Keynes, so pretty sure it had to be another problem with BT.  Unless of course it was Stony Stratford!!! 

I'm also in MK (Wolverton), no outages here.

[Moonshine]

I'm also in MK (Wolverton), no outages here.

That's odd.  Support even looked up my area and confirmed there was an issue here!  Oh well, MK is pretty big, so it does look as though I was one of the unlucky ones. 

[David]

It did affect users as far away as Cumbria so it is possible Moonshine

[Rik]

It was a failure of the management system of some 800 MUXes. From what I gather, you could be on one of the MUXes and not be affected, but if you happened to need to re-connect, you'd fail.

[Moonshine]

It was a failure of the management system of some 800 MUXes. From what I gather, you could be on one of the MUXes and not be affected, but if you happened to need to re-connect, you'd fail.

I won't even pretend that I am able to interpret the aforementioned!!!

[Ann]

I thought muxes were what television channels were on.  Didn't know that internet connections were too.  Confusing eh?

[Rik]

They're muxing everything up these days.

[Sebby]

[Moonshine]

Just had another brief outage!  Anyone else???

[Rik]

Nothing here.

[Moonshine]

I'm obviously having a bad month!

[Rik]

Did the router lose sync, or did you just lose connection to the net?

[Moonshine]

  Sorry Rik, forgotten how to check that, and I know I should know by now, but I'm just incredibly dumb at this sort of thing.

All I know is it came up with message "looking up", and then nothing loaded.  So, I unplugged lead from modem, left it about five minutes, then plugged it back in, and hey presto!

[Rik]

Don't do it that way, Moonshine. If you've not disconnected, the BT software sees it as a sign of instability, unplug the router from the mains instead. If you're using a USB modem, this doesn't apply, but might explain why you have been hit when I have not.

[Sebby]

To me it sounds like it's a loss of sync, but we need to be certain.

[Moonshine]

Oh dear.  I tend to panic when the internet doesn't work, and just do the only thing I know how to do 

I have a D-Link ADSL2+ ethernet modem, if that's any help.

[Rik]

If you feel the need, then power it down, Moonshine. However, first look at the logs and indicator lights, to see if you can diagnose the state at the time.

See if you can find your router here then follow the instructions to extract the stats.

[Moonshine]

Is this what I should be looking at???

Sorry for logging off every few secs, then coming back.....keep having to check the dinner!

Item   Downstream   Upstream   Unit
SNR Margin   6   22   dB
Line Attenuation   51   29   dB
Data Rate   3040   448   kbps

[Steve]

As they stand they look ok I think If you were repeatedly dropping connection I think your downstream margin would have been raised by the BT software but its at the default of 6db. Could you do a BT speedtest @http://speedtester.bt.com/ that will show your IP profile. If you've been dropping sync you IP profile will not be related to current sync.

[Moonshine]

These are the results from the BT speedtest:-


Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test:  -provides background information.
    Your DSL connection rate: 3040 kbps(DOWN-STREAM),  448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
    IP profile for your line is - 3500 kbps
    Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 2482 kbps

[Sebby]

Things look okay. The sync is perhaps a little low, which suggests possible noise pickup. For now it's probably worth leaving things as they are, but next time you lose connection, let us have a look at the log.

[Moonshine]

Will do.  Thank you everyone 

[Lance]

Odd that the profile is higher than the sync though...

[Rik]

I had a stuck high profile for a while, they are rare though...