Loss of service reports

drummer · Oct 20, 2010, 11:31:22

Yep, no connection here too.

Simon · Oct 20, 2010, 11:31:49

All seems fine here in Sussex.

psp83 · Oct 20, 2010, 11:31:51

BT are complete ****.

Sorry for the language!

esh · Oct 20, 2010, 11:34:50

I was going to say, it seems awfully like the embarrassing cock up a week or so ago regarding the hostlinks, especially with people getting odd IPs. I realise it's not usually IDNet's policy to be quite as abrasive as AAISP but a few harsh words are probably in order now...

jameshurrell · Oct 20, 2010, 11:36:55

Yep - two lines here... home and office. Office (where I'm currently went down briefly but came back up pretty quickly - thankfully), but the home line is still down as confirmed by my Thinkbroadband ping:

Home

Office - you can see the downtime in red (very thin line)

Inkblot · Oct 20, 2010, 11:38:22

Just had a text from my daughter telling me it's down at home as well, not such a problem as it is at work but a pain anyway

psp83 · Oct 20, 2010, 11:44:33

If it doesn't come back up soon then that's my deadline missed for getting a site live for a client.

Going to start looking for a cheap second ISP today I think as a backup.

Tina · Oct 20, 2010, 11:49:45

I've always defended IDnet, but this is getting silly now. And yes I don't know the in and outs of it all, I just know I am without a service (again) and I pay more than some of my friends, which I don't mind if it's a good service most of the time

esh · Oct 20, 2010, 11:50:14

psp83: If there is cable in your area it makes sense as a backup as this will not be prone to simultaneous "general" BT faults with your IDNet line.

jezuk1 · Oct 20, 2010, 11:51:48

Mine's down too

psp83 · Oct 20, 2010, 12:08:58

Quote from: esh on Oct 20, 2010, 11:50:14
psp83: If there is cable in your area it makes sense as a backup as this will not be prone to simultaneous "general" BT faults with your IDNet line.

We don't have cable in this area so we are stuck with bt

I would most likely go with talk talk llu as a backup. My sister & mate is with them and doesn't get any problems.

netgem21 · Oct 20, 2010, 12:22:37

Well, this is the second outage in a matter of weeks now. Unacceptable.

Off to Zen, see ya!

karvala · Oct 20, 2010, 12:27:25

Quote from: Tina on Oct 20, 2010, 11:49:45
I've always defended IDnet, but this is getting silly now. And yes I don't know the in and outs of it all, I just know I am without a service (again) and I pay more than some of my friends, which I don't mind if it's a good service most of the time

Exactly. I don't mind paying more (substantially more these days given the ever-falling prices elsewhere), but I expect to get something for it. When I came to IDNet, and when I suggested to many others that they should come as well, it was on the basis that it was the most trouble-free ISP, i.e. no silly restrictions or FUPs or port blocks, no call centre of script-readers in Bombay who would take a week to fix even a basic fault (if you could persuade them that there was a fault at all), very good customer service and very few outages.

Most of those things remain in place, but an increase in the number of outages in the last couple of years is clearly evident; the customer service is still good, but in my view has lost a little of its early lustre given one or two of my personal experiences which I won't rehash here. Of course, I realise that the outages are almost never the fault of IDNet, and in that sense I feel sorry for them, but at the end of the day they're not my fault either.

I certainly hope they give BT a good kicking for this, assuming that yet again, the outage is BT's fault.

P.S. Needless to say, my connection is also down again in this latest outage.

esh · Oct 20, 2010, 12:31:13

All of IDNet's systems appear OK to me so I'm fairly sure it's BT here, and that's what their announcement implies. Who wants to bet there's some glitch in the configuration they had to reimplement a week or so ago?

dlorde · Oct 20, 2010, 12:35:32

2010-10-20 12:31: BT have identified a fault with one of our two Host Link connections to them. The fault investigation is ongoing and also why those affected customers have not automatically failed over to the working connection.

DorsetBoy · Oct 20, 2010, 12:38:06

Quote from: dlorde on Oct 20, 2010, 12:35:32
2010-10-20 12:31: BT have identified a fault with one of our two Host Link connections to them. The fault investigation is ongoing and also why those affected customers have not automatically failed over to the working connection.

Deja vu ? This was supposed to have been sorted previously......

karvala · Oct 20, 2010, 12:49:31

How depressingly predictable. IDNet should seriously pursue BT for a lot of money for this. To have a primary system fail is bad but these things happen occasionally. To have the backup system fail at the same time (just over a week ago), due to a deeply flawed design that made it tantamount to fraud to charge for it as a backup system, is unacceptable. To have the same backup system fail to work as a backup AGAIN barely a week later is frankly taking the piss.

cs · Oct 20, 2010, 13:06:58

This is getting too much now.

I think the biggest problem is how long BT are taking to rectify these faults. I mean an hour and a half to work out that one of the host links was down...........come on........

Over 2 hours down now

esh · Oct 20, 2010, 13:13:58

To clarify, the last major outage was not the backup failing, but the entire deletion of the configuration for IDNet -- without the configuration, neither the primary nor the secondary hostlinks will function; that is to say, the backup is a hardware level redundancy, if a primary router fails, the secondary kicks in.

BT rectified this blunder after 6-7 hours as I recall. Unfortunately it appears what happened today is that a hostlink failed and it turns out the hardware redundancy doesn't work either....

Oh dear.

DorsetBoy · Oct 20, 2010, 13:17:16

Quote from: esh on Oct 20, 2010, 13:13:58
To clarify, the last major outage was not the backup failing, but the entire deletion of the configuration for IDNet -- without the configuration, neither the primary nor the secondary hostlinks will function; that is to say, the backup is a hardware level redundancy, if a primary router fails, the secondary kicks in.

BT rectified this blunder after 6-7 hours as I recall. Unfortunately it appears what happened today is that a hostlink failed and it turns out the hardware redundancy doesn't work either....

Oh dear.

But this fault is identical to a long outage which happened a while back and that entailed the hostlink and failover not working as they were both located together on the same failed equipment. It was said then that steps would be taken to ensure that it never happened again..........

esh · Oct 20, 2010, 13:19:59

Yeah, this is true. Likely they reinstated the old unfixed configuration... or it just never worked at all.

I wonder if IDNet have anything in writing over this? Probably not.

quack · Oct 20, 2010, 13:39:50

Service down for over two hours in York, too. Second time in as many weeks ...

jameshurrell · Oct 20, 2010, 13:47:25

Service: Announcement
Updated: 2010-10-20 13:30:02
State: Sub-Optimal Service
Message: ADSL Max lines on the 20C broadband network are successfully failing over to the working BT Gigabit link but ADSL2+ lines on the 21C network are not. BT are diagnosing

That' explains why one of my lines is up and the other is down!

dlorde · Oct 20, 2010, 13:52:59

Just got a call from Miriam(?) returning my previous unanswered support call (what other ISP would do that?). As usual, BT have given no timescale for a fix. I suggested IDNET claim a refund on their failover fee - although I would expect their SLA would have suitable compensation for failure included.

ETA: Oh yes, and she suggested turning off the modem for 30 mins to see if it might then reconnect to a different (i.e. working) service.

karvala · Oct 20, 2010, 14:03:13

Quote from: DorsetBoy on Oct 20, 2010, 13:17:16
But this fault is identical to a long outage which happened a while back and that entailed the hostlink and failover not working as they were both located together on the same failed equipment. It was said then that steps would be taken to ensure that it never happened again..........

This brings me to another point I've been meaning to make. So far in this outage, IDNet have behaved exactly as we might like them to (posting the problem on the their network status, giving updates when they receive them, trying to pursue BT for a fix ETA albeit without success), and all credit to them for that. However, there is a sense that once the problem is fixed, the investigation into the causes and remedy to ensure that it won't happen again, is just quietly dropped, and long-term nothing really changes.

Take the most recent previous outage: in the Announcements section on here, Simon from IDNet posted that BT were being asked for an explanation as to exactly what happened. 9 days on, and either no explanation has been given, or it hasn't been passed on to the people who were actually affected by the outage and who want reassurance that it's not going to happen again. Did BT provide an explanation? Did IDNet accept that explanation? What action did BT take to ensure that it wouldn't happen again? As an affected customer, I don't just want to hear "we'll pursue them for an explanation" followed by a deafening silence which suggests that nothing has been done, I want to hear what the explanation actually IS, and what action is taken to ensure that it won't happen again. If BT refuse to provide an explanation or a course of action, I want to hear that too. Just sweeping these things under the rug once the service is back up and running again is clearly not working, and leaves sceptics like myself with the sense that BT are just screwing over IDNet at any opportunity, and that this isn't going to change because IDNet won't stand up to them.