Loss of service reports

[Rudds]

.

I've been a loyal customer for years but it seems IDNET is in BT's blacklist.

Is it ok to pay £25 for this cr*p service?

Aren't we entitled to any compensation?

I was with aol for 7 years and although their speeds were pathetic in peak times (traffic shaping) i can honestly say i never experianced a complete outage anyway when i rang to leave they wanted to give me 3 months free of charge.
Idnet are a big business customer with bt so yes compo is going to be paid i have no doubt. Will you get any somehow i doubt it.t]
Anyway still off here.

[Rik]

Can some one whos tech savy about internet infrastructure explain whats going on and whos fault it is?

What I know at this point.

1) IDNet rent a hostlink (chunk of fibre and terminations etc) from BT, which connects their customers to their network via BT's network. These hostlinks are supplied over two sets of fibre, one live, one there as a fallback should the first fail. That fallback should be transparent to customers, ie it should happen before you notice a lost connection.

2) A week or so back, someone at BT wiped IDNet's configuration from the system, effectively BT ceased to recognise them as a customer, so it was impossible to connect as an IDNet customer.

3) Today, the primary hostlink failed. The secondary took over, but would only connect ADSL Max customers due to a configuration problem. That took BT several hours to fix and, last time I heard, they still hadn't repaired the primary link. Connections started coming back late this afternoon, then, around 7, BT broke all connections. These started to return around 7:45.

As yet, BT have not given a satisfactory explanation for any of this.

[Rik]

.I was with aol for 7 years and although their speeds were pathetic in peak times (traffic shaping) i can honestly say i never experianced a complete outage anyway when i rang to leave they wanted to give me 3 months free of charge.
Idnet are a big business customer with bt so yes compo is going to be paid i have no doubt. Will you get any somehow i doubt it.t]
Anyway still off here.

What have you tried, Paul?

[adamb]

If IDnet cannot give us compo in the way of money knocked off our next bill, how about extra GB's of bandwidth? I am thinking at least double the allowance  That would make me stay (for now at least)

[Holodene]

It's back up! Yay!

[Tina]

a tenner that I had to put on my dongle today would help me stay for now

[kinmel]

From our experiences over the last 12 months, I don't think BT hold Idnet in much regard, perhaps we are too small to be worth treating sensibly.

Or perhaps Idnet are just unlucky time after time and so I am coming to see Idnet from Napoleon's view about army Generals; lucky ones beat good ones every time

AAISP looks as good as Zen and both are now in the equation.

[Rik]

If IDnet cannot give us compo in the way of money knocked off our next bill, how about extra GB's of bandwidth? I am thinking at least double the allowance   That would make me stay (for now at least)

Their priority now is to get things working properly. I'm sure they'll be well aware of customer sentiment.

[Baz]

all this has certainly got the forum visitors up  

[Technical Ben]

I spoke too soon. Sorry for any typos. currently have my pc balanced on a side board, trying to get a wifi signal to a BT fon/openzone service.
If the BT addresses were leaked by mistake, I'm sure theid get some visitors right about now!

[alexwright]

While this loss of service is exceedingly annoying (I use my connection for business: I've lost a day's work), its not their fault.

The best thing you can do is write a letter of complaint that IDNet can wave at BT to demand compensation. If they then don't pass that through to us, well, then its time to think about leaving. But not before then!

IDNet are dealing with a monopoly competitor, its not an easy position to be in. Give them ammunition that they can use with the regulator, but also give them your support.

[Rudds]

It seems to be rolling out, Paul, I had one line reconnect several minutes before the other.

hi Rik,
Just come back up here very slow though i think mobiles faster at the moment. I think idnet have some really serious issues with bt here though mate. What do you make of it all?

Good result for us last night 2-0 good result for Sven too!

[foreversummer]

Can see tht Zen Pro offers 100 gig download per month for £34.99.  But cannot see any info regarding traffic management.  Also do they offer a Max service with traffic priority at the exchange?

[DorsetBoy]

If IDnet cannot give us compo in the way of money knocked off our next bill, how about extra GB's of bandwidth? I am thinking at least double the allowance  That would make me stay (for now at least)

The last thing you want is for everyone to suddenly have double bandwidth allowance.

[Baz]

The best thing you can do is write a letter of complaint that IDNet can wave at BT to demand compensation. If they then don't pass that through to us, well, then its time to think about leaving. But not before then!

some one could draft a letter template and we could all use it to send one to IDNet,   if you want to of course  

[Fish]

Got my Mac code (for which many thanks) and Zen's details, just in case the whole deal goes down for a third time over the next couple of weeks. The past few weeks remind me of the old fun and games at Demon Internet back in the day. Sunlight and the lawyers (if there is a reasonable case against BT) sound the best remedies here, at a guess. If this slips into head-shaking but nothing more then the system is getting a free pass for the same thing to happen again and again, I think. A broken system will stay broken until it is changed and everyone can see that it is changed.

[adamb]

Their priority now is to get things working properly. I'm sure they'll be well aware of customer sentiment.

I thought it was out of IDnet's control? Just like us, waiting for connections to reestablish. Sure they will have people chasing up the issues while I sit here with a home server with no connection and a very important missed deadline. I guess it's my fault for leaving things 'til the last minute as usual  

I know it's very frustrating for everyone but as far as the majority of end users are concerned they will point the finger at the ISP.

[adamb]

The last thing you want is for everyone to suddenly have double bandwidth allowance.

Not everyone... Just me 

[sobranie]

What I know at this point.

1) IDNet rent a hostlink (chunk of fibre and terminations etc) from BT, which connects their customers to their network via BT's network. These hostlinks are supplied over two sets of fibre, one live, one there as a fallback should the first fail. That fallback should be transparent to customers, ie it should happen before you notice a lost connection.

2) A week or so back, someone at BT wiped IDNet's configuration from the system, effectively BT ceased to recognise them as a customer, so it was impossible to connect as an IDNet customer.

3) Today, the primary hostlink failed. The secondary took over, but would only connect ADSL Max customers due to a configuration problem. That took BT several hours to fix and, last time I heard, they still hadn't repaired the primary link. Connections started coming back late this afternoon, then, around 7, BT broke all connections. These started to return around 7:45.

As yet, BT have not given a satisfactory explanation for any of this.

Rik, any comments on the following;

1 live connx and 1 fall back connx.  I suspect these 2 connx terminate (as 1) somewhere along the bt network hence 1 fault, everyone gone!!  Therefore IDNet require a 3rd independant connx do they not? Yeah, I know that's expensive but so is IDNets subscription rates to we punters!!

BT wiped (r) wiped IDNet' configuration!!!! How and why for God sake and where's the apologies from BT. Perhaps we should ring Bombay on this!!

Why so long to fix the problem this time?  Traces of Horlicks in the BT staff I'll be bound. No satisfactory explanation from BT ..... do you in all honesty expect an explanation from this bunch of w***ers?

just my 2p worth.

[Simon_idnet]

Another one thinking about leaving here, but it really depends on the IDNet response after it's been finally fixed.  If they pursue BT for an explanation of what went wrong and how it will be avoided in future, and have the courtesy to provide it to the hundreds of affected end users, then I will stay with them because the outage was not their fault (beyond their rather dubious policy of not confronting BT).  If, however, we get the same deafening silence that we've had after every previous outage, as though users are not entitled to an explanation and should just be grateful that they have a connection at all, then I will certainly not be handing over any more money to a company with that attitude, and I'll do my best to ensure that other people don't either.

The outage was not IDNet's responsibility, but how they respond (or don't respond) certainly is.

Fair comment and I would take the same stance if I were you. We have yet to receive a satisfactory response to our demands for an explanation to the outage on 10th Oct. The response so far has been perfunctory in the extreme: "it was caused by human error". Well, we knew that already. Although we don't necessarily want to have a scalp we do want to know how a human was able/allowed to make such a catastrophic error and how they will be prevented from doing so again in the future. I suspect that there is a fair degree of buck-passing going on right now within BT but we will not let this slide by. I met the BT Product Manager in BT Centre last week and he has raised this as a High Level Complaint for us. We are awaiting their investigation and we will report back to you when they reveal their findings.

In the meantime we'll be pursuing them yet again concerning the events of today.
Regards
Simon

[Rik]

hi Rik,
Just come back up here very slow though i think mobiles faster at the moment. I think idnet have some really serious issues with bt here though mate. What do you make of it all?

I'm probably not as frustrated as Simon & Tim, but I suspect that all the forum staff are not far behind. We know the work and effort that has gone into building IDNet up, and it's being destroyed by BT. That the latter can get away with it infuriates me, but I'm not a BT customer so can't have a go at them.

I think it's generally true to say that when IDNet get a problem, it seems to be like a London bus and is closely followed by one or two more. That said, I don't recall seeing such a level of unhappiness in the forum, but I do understand people's frustration.

Good result for us last night 2-0 good result for Sven too!

Nothing like looking on the bright side, I got transferred to my preferred cardiologist today, so I had something to smile about too.

[Rik]

Fair comment and I would take the same stance if I were you. We have yet to receive a satisfactory response to our demands for an explanation to the outage on 10th Oct. The response so far has been perfunctory in the extreme: "it was caused by human error". Well, we knew that already. Although we don't necessarily want to have a scalp we do want to know how a human was able/allowed to make such a catastrophic error and how they will be prevented from doing so again in the future. I suspect that there is a fair degree of buck-passing going on right now within BT but we will not let this slide by. I met the BT Product Manager in BT Centre last week and he has raised this as a High Level Complaint for us. We are awaiting their investigation and we will report back to you when they reveal their findings.

In the meantime we'll be pursuing them yet again concerning the events of today.
Regards
Simon

Thanks, Simon. If you get someone to kick, can we all join in please?

[Technical Ben]

I wonder if BT evr have this happen to their OWN customers? If they can get it right on their own connections, they have no right to mess up IDNets!

[Rik]

Couldn't agree more, Ben.

[esh]

sobranie: As I understand the backup hostlink is hardware independent of the primary hostlink. So, theoretically, if it were working properly, it should fall-over elegantly without problems as Rik said. There shouldn't be need for a third hostlink unless the primary fails, and the secondary fails, which would be very unlikely. A configuration error will obviously wipe out *both*, because neither knows how to route the data. No amount of hostlinks will fix a configuration fault.

Personally I think one could have infinite hostlinks, but with BT administration, it would still fall over somehow.

Simply put, I can understand both side of the argument here -- but the simple conclusion is, if there were an IDNet quality LLU ISP .... well, we'd all be there.