Broadband down

[Steve]

I'm afraid redundancy has another meaning when it comes to BT

[Danni]

I've got Colin here threatening to go to Talk Talk (he can't get on at home of course- he's on ADSL Max). I hope this gets fixed soon- I can't lose my friend to the dark side!

[Colin Burns]

no back up line so far away from my IDnet line that is almost not attached to the house

[Danni]

What, in our flat? Our line works fine...

[Technical Ben]

"Incident Details: At the moment some Broadband End Users may be experiencing a loss of Broadband service."
May? May?
Ok, we unplugged the wires, turned off the equipment and deleted the files. I reckon that should be 99% of our customers down. The other 1% must be wizards or something!

[esh]

Well I'm fine here, but I feel your pain after the recent outages.... Hope it's not another 16 hrs.

[Colin Burns]

probably 32

[esh]

Engineers or hours?

[Colin Burns]

both


but i finally have interwebs so can forgot the evil thoughts of considering talk talk for a backup line   

[jimc]

Hey it even made the mainstream news, perhaps it will embarrass BT enough to get their fingers out

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-11656851

[zebrum]

after an optimistic reboot of my modem my connection is back up

[Steve]

It was a long list of affected areas
http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/mso.php?id=30527

[JB]

Interestingly, my area code is on that list but the service has been solid for the last week.

[Glenn]

It only affected 20CN connections, so if you are on ADSL2+ or FTTC, then you would have retained service.

[davej99]

I like the bit of the BT statement "BT's engineering teams worked throughout the night..... ," as if this is unusual or worthy of comment, as if the poor wee souls were kept out of bed just for us. This company is on Planet Zog. It is still behaving like a 1950s public monopoly. It really is time to do an AT&T on these dreamers and break it up. A dose of life in the real world is needed here.

[Steve]

It doesn't look like it would take much to disrupt the majority of this country's broadband network. One exchange and half the country is down.

[JB]

It only affected 20CN connections, so if you are on ADSL2+ or FTTC, then you would have retained service.

I'm on bog standard 8 meg steam internet.

Not a hope of 21CN or FTTC in this rural paradise 

[armadillo]

It really is time to (do an AT&T on these dreamers and) break it up. A dose of life in the real world is needed here.

After all, that strategy worked really well with British Rail 

Trouble is, creating infrastructure is horrendously expensive. Companies need to make a profit. They can do that by making customers pay or getting government subsidy. I see little prospect of either in the UK.

[davej99]

After all, that strategy worked really well with British Rail 

But it did work with AT&T and the Baby Bells.

[armadillo]

But it did work with AT&T and the Baby Bells.

Yes. sort of. But then that was over 25 years ago. And since then several of those have been merged or acquired and they are back down to three (I believe) and each is probably bigger than BT. I think there is an economy of scale factor at work here. Also, in the US at that time, there was probably a great deal more going on in building other infrastructure, such as road, rail and electric power distribution. The UK electric grid is probably now at greater risk than the broadband infrastructure. It will more likely be a development in core infrastructure of that kind which could carry a telecoms restructure on the back of it. There have been several attempts in the UK to distribute telecom trunking over electric power lines. An idea so good that I invested some of my own money in one .... and it went bust. Doh!

[pctech]

It doesn't look like it would take much to disrupt the majority of this country's broadband network. One exchange and half the country is down.

Lets hope that certain parties that would want to do that were looking the other way at the time.

[Glenn]

I would think, all telephone exchanges are primary targets in the event of a war. Take out the communications first followed by power stations.

[Ted]

I would think, all telephone exchanges are primary targets in the event of a war. Take out the communications first followed by power stations.

I don't think Al Qaeda have to bother trying to disrupt communications in the UK. Bt appear to be managing perfectly well on their own. 

[pctech]

Very true Ted.

I think resilient connections will come but we'll have to be prepared to pay around the price of a top sky subscription now because two circuits will be needed to be installed at your house/business with a router to monitor and manage the failover as happens now with leased lines in a lot of businesses and indeed ISPs.

[Bill]

I think resiliency at the end user level would be rather OTT (though it should be available if you're prepared to pay for it), but from the exchange onwards it should be part of the basic design philosopy.