Network down again

Rik · Sep 23, 2009, 16:59:36

OTOH, how many people are experiencing issues and for how long? In the past three months, I've had one engineering outage ~2hrs and two major service outages, about 4 hours each. Say 10 hours down time in 2100 hours, 0.5%.

onlynik · Sep 23, 2009, 17:00:12

Quote from: rireed3 on Sep 23, 2009, 16:54:55
Isn't that always the way?

It's too bad IDNet would have to defend a Trading Standards action, but I don't see how they can allocate Peak and Off-peak allowances in the circumstance that they can almost predict that random customers will lose out because of overnight 'maintenance'. Even the rail companies can't do that all the time, but then BT are quite special

Richard

Easy, bring the off peak froward by a couple of hours, say 2200 - 0800 rather than 0000 - 0900 ( I know I've added another hour in, just being cheeky)

Colin Burns · Sep 23, 2009, 17:01:38

Quote from: onlynik on Sep 23, 2009, 16:52:34
Exchange: Aberdeen Denburn
Product: Home SuperPro (ADSL2+)
Status: Router not connecting, then connecting able to ping WAN IP address, unable to ping WAN gateway or DNS servers. When I was unable to connect I had PPP errors (line still synced at 24Meg(ish))
Logs: No logging yet. Will look in to that tonight.

One other thing is teh support 24x7?

do your neibours use bog standard ADSL or ADSL2+

as that might explain it

rireed3 · Sep 23, 2009, 17:02:24

QuoteOne other thing is teh support 24x7?

I haven't used this for a while, but there was an out-of-hours answerphone that helped me a couple of times:

01462476556

onlynik · Sep 23, 2009, 17:05:32

Quote from: Rik on Sep 23, 2009, 16:59:36
OTOH, how many people are experiencing issues and for how long? In the past three months, I've had one engineering outage ~2hrs and two major service outages, about 4 hours each. Say 10 hours down time in 2100 hours, 0.5%.

Or 1.25% if you take off peak only.

However it is pretty irrelevant. Outages will happen. I'm not sure which is better though. Slow speeds or outages.

I'm thinking outages.

Rik · Sep 23, 2009, 17:06:13

Quote from: onlynik on Sep 23, 2009, 16:52:34
Exchange: Aberdeen Denburn
Product: Home SuperPro (ADSL2+)
Status: Router not connecting, then connecting able to ping WAN IP address, unable to ping WAN gateway or DNS servers. When I was unable to connect I had PPP errors (line still synced at 24Meg(ish))
Logs: No logging yet. Will look in to that tonight.

One other thing is teh support 24x7?

Router not connecting indicates a BT issue, lack of sync is never an ISP issue. Support is not 24/7, though you will often get a reply in the small hours if you email them.

I know BT are rolling out new software to MSANs atm, this may have been to do with that. They are also still re-configuring the 21CN network to deal with issues that have been revealed in the past few months.

Rik · Sep 23, 2009, 17:07:58

Quote from: onlynik on Sep 23, 2009, 17:05:32
However it is pretty irrelevant. Outages will happen. I'm not sure which is better though. Slow speeds or outages.

I'm thinking outages.

Difficult to say. The outages drove me mad, but I was able to switch to my other connection. The slow speeds were annoying, but didn't hugely affect my use of the 'net, possibly because I'm not used to high speeds.

Rik · Sep 23, 2009, 17:23:08

Quote from: rireed3 on Sep 23, 2009, 17:02:24
I haven't used this for a while, but there was an out-of-hours answerphone that helped me a couple of times:

01462476556

That number's changed, Richard, use either 0800 710 2000 or 01462 480092.

Rik · Sep 23, 2009, 17:24:05

PLEASE NOTE:

Three posts from this thread have been moved to the new loss of service reports thread.

onlynik · Sep 23, 2009, 17:30:33

Quote from: Colin Burns on Sep 23, 2009, 17:01:38
do your neibours use bog standard ADSL or ADSL2+

as that might explain it

Ooh, never though of that. They are ADSL MAX. (Well the one I spoke to is)

Colin Burns · Sep 23, 2009, 17:43:19

that would explain how they had service

Rik · Sep 23, 2009, 17:45:19

Indeed, it points to an MSAN issue, or possibly a core 21CN node problem.

Colin Burns · Sep 23, 2009, 19:16:55

its not very often i post somthing sensible oh Dear what have the modarators done to me

Rik · Sep 23, 2009, 19:21:58

Nothing yet, Colin, but just step this way...

Ray · Sep 23, 2009, 19:30:14

Will you be needing the rack for this, Rik, I've just oiled it.

Rik · Sep 23, 2009, 19:30:54

Thanks, Ray. If you could just give the Iron Maiden a quick hose out as well.

Ray · Sep 23, 2009, 19:32:01

NP, Rik, consider it done.

Rik · Sep 23, 2009, 19:32:48

Thanks, Ray - and with that,

Ray · Sep 23, 2009, 19:33:55

Enjoy.

Colin Burns · Sep 23, 2009, 21:59:33

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

karvala · Sep 24, 2009, 01:08:15

I've had about a dozen outages in the last week alone:-

(1) Around 1.00am on 14th
(2) Around 2.00am on 14th
(3) Around 11.00pm on 14th
(4) Around 2.00am on 15th
(5) Around 1.00am on 16th
(6) Around 7.30pm on 18th
(7) Around 8.30pm on 18th
(8) Around 9.30pm on 19th (yoyo for about an hour and a half)
(9) Around 2.00am on 20th
(10) Around 1.00am on 21st
(11) Around 11.30pm on 22nd
(12) Around 4.30am on 23rd
(13) Around 11.30pm on 23rd

It's probably significant that all of them without exception are in the evening or the middle of the night, and most of them only last a few minutes, with a couple lasting up to a couple of hours with a constant on-off behaviour before a proper connection was restored. I suspect (hope!) it is BT work, and it'll cease within the next week or so.

rireed3 · Sep 24, 2009, 11:05:10

I agree that anything from 11PM to 5AM is suspicious, but the ones during evening peak time are unusual. Have you eliminated line performance by looking at your stats? If you always have a lot of errors or noise margin that frequently drops to a very low value, it makes you more vulnerable to occasional external noise, especially at night.

Rik has started a sticky thread on this topic called "Loss of service reports", so please re-post there where you are sure a perfectly good connection was suddenly cut off or authentication lost, almost always between 11pm and 5am, and often for some time, even hours.

Thanks,
Richard

ogster · Sep 26, 2009, 03:22:02

I've been with Idnet for 6 months.

I had an outage one morning a couple of weeks ago. Big red light on Internet indicator. Phoned support, they confirmed it was a BT outage in our area since 3am. It was fixed by noon. Really not an Idnet problem there and I value having an ISP who you can call and they talk sense and don't treat you like an idiot.

Previously I had another issue that support helped trace to wiring issues in the house, plugging over to the BT master socket fixed it all.

Really you can do an awful lot worse in your ISP choice than Idnet!

Rik · Sep 26, 2009, 10:23:24

I agree.

Niall · Sep 26, 2009, 10:43:15

Quote from: onlynik on Sep 23, 2009, 17:00:12
Easy, bring the off peak froward by a couple of hours, say 2200 - 0800 rather than 0000 - 0900 ( I know I've added another hour in, just being cheeky)

I'd actually love to see the peak times moved a bit. I really don't like leaving my PC on overnight, so the majority of my downloads are done at peak times. After all I'm highly unlikely to see a demo I want to download through Steam while I'm asleep! This month for example the UT3 free weekend thing was done on Steam plus I bought two new games in the month. This totalled well over 10gb with patches (UT3 alone was 8gb). I've also been watching a lot of guitar tutorials on various websites, which has had a good nibble at my allowance.

Due to all that, this month for the first time since I've been with IDnet (which I believe is nearly two years. It may be a bit over thinking about it!) I'm going to go over my limit by a few gb! It's a shame that IDnet don't look at your usage and take this into consideration. If there was a rolling tally of what I hadn't used in off peak kept, I'd probably have about 90% (probably more) of my off peak bandwidth left over that 2 year period.

I wonder how much money IDnet have saved with my not using any of that. Conversely I wonder how much more it's cost them having the offpeak times set as they are, "forcing" me to download during the day.