IDNet maintenance - Saturday, January 12, 2008

[mogden]

Me three!

[ter_2k]

Not too impressed with this. Posting an "announcement" on a forum that I didn't visit until today, the day before an outage is not very professional.

Not to mention carrying out an upgrade on a Saturday morning !

[Ann]

Oh I'm glad someone wrote about purplecloud.  My email stopped coming in from them just before I was disconnected.  You don't realise how much the ISP influences until it breaks.  But if my synch rate doesn't recover I shall be very upset.

[derval]

I lost my connection also for about a few mins - I restarted the router, and it seemed to restart - whether that was coincidence or not.....

[Noreen]

Notices were placed here and on ThinkBroadband yesterday, however there's nothing on the IDNet website which is, perhaps, an oversight.

Shouldn't this work be reflected somehow on the Status page?

[Rik]

I've already mentioned it, Noreen.

[Sebby]

I just checked my router logs and I didn't lose sync at all, but it does look like I lost the connection to IDNet at some point over night.

[Rik]

Any idea when, Sebby? The work didn't start till 7, so it may have been BT at work (I'm expecting a rash of stale sessions on Monday morning. )

[Nova]

Hm, seem to have lost lots of chunks of the net too...

To clarify : I have google! So I can read news, and I managed to secure a nifty new album to listen to, but most of the net appears inaccessible beyond N hops (usually 4 or 5) due to routing fun.

Oh well...

[minimoog]

Lots of sites unreachable here too (BBC, Pistonheads, Cahoot, etc) and POP3 email collection also not working.

Don't like to criticise IDNet as their service is normally spot on but if these issues are related to the upgrade then I have to agree that Saturday morning was a bloody stupid time to carry it out.

Edit: I see service staus shows no problems. This clearly isn't the case...

[Noreen]

Any idea when, Sebby? The work didn't start till 7, so it may have been BT at work (I'm expecting a rash of stale sessions on Monday morning. )

Just so that I'm prepared, would you explain what a stale session is, Rik?

[Apep]

This is a bit disappointing, to be honest it's the only bad experience of IDNet that I know of so I'm not too worried, but an e-mail to inform us of any maintenance should have been sent around. I just had to google "weather" and click on about 15 links until I could get one to work! Wikipedia doesn't work, nor does BBC, thinkbroadband, Setanta, plus all kinds of links I'm researching about alternatives to Windows updates. This kind of maintenance with the potential impact it has had, should be carried out at the lowest usage time possible, which I suspect is not Saturday morning/afternoon.....?

[Nova]

Stale session : When the net thinks you're connected but your router really doesn't agree. Needs to be reset from somewhere else other than the router (can't remember if it's BT or IDNet you need to pester), worst case scenario is to notify Simon or one of Simon's minions and the problem should get solved pretty fast. Do the usual of rebooting the router (leave it down for a minimum of 15 mins beforehand) to get rid of the possibility of an untimed PPP session still being up on the local exchange.

[minimoog]

Looks like everything's back up and running again 

[Nova]

Looks like everything's back up and running again 

Looks it, may expect some blips over the next hour whilst things are still tweaked but eh... *shrug*

[Rik]

I've just had word from Tim. IDNet send their apologies, the work has proved more disruptive than they envisaged and, ironically, he's been unable to access the network status page to update it.

They are pushing ahead to complete the work asap.

[Rik]

Do the usual of rebooting the router (leave it down for a minimum of 15 mins beforehand) to get rid of the possibility of an untimed PPP session still being up on the local exchange.

Or log in to the BT test domain and then revert to the normal IDNet login - at least that's the theory.

[Noreen]

he's been unable to access the network status page to update it.

[Sebby]

Any idea when, Sebby? The work didn't start till 7, so it may have been BT at work (I'm expecting a rash of stale sessions on Monday morning. )

No idea, Rik; this is one thing I find a bit annoying about the 2Wire; some of the reporting is definitely wrong. If I look at ISP Connection Establishment it's showing 215:02:38, which is madness as the router has only been connected for 2 and a half days!

Is there another way I can tell on the 2Wire?

[Noreen]

Stale session : When the net thinks you're connected but your router really doesn't agree. Needs to be reset from somewhere else other than the router (can't remember if it's BT or IDNet you need to pester), worst case scenario is to notify Simon or one of Simon's minions and the problem should get solved pretty fast. Do the usual of rebooting the router (leave it down for a minimum of 15 mins beforehand) to get rid of the possibility of an untimed PPP session still being up on the local exchange.

.........and I don't really understand that either.

[Nova]

Or log in to the BT test domain and then revert to the normal IDNet login - at least that's the theory.

That requires effort

15 mins gives you time to make a cuppa!

[Nova]

.........and I don't really understand that either.

Basically a "Stale session" is when one bit of equipment (usually the local exchange) considers you connected. But your router says that you are not, and continually tries to log in, of course because the guys at the other end believe you ARE logged in, they refuse these log in attempts and you're stuck.

To remove any possibility of a stuck (not stale) session, turn off your router for 15 mins and make a coffee, listen to some music, relax etc. If it's still not agreeing after say 30 mins of this kind of treatment, contact IDNet.

[spiral]

Not been here for ages as everything has been pretty much perfect. Went to check some stuff today and no internet, checked router and found i'd been reconnected 25m ago and only now connecting to sites other than google. 

Not a big issue but it would be better to have an email notifaction of planned works as i bet the majority of customers don't check here or thinkbroadband much or at all.

[Sebby]

Not a big issue but it would be better to have an email notifaction of planned works as i bet the majority of customers don't check here or thinkbroadband much or at all.

They probably didn't anticipate any impact on customers, though this goes to show that any maintenance work can have unfavourable consequences. 

[Inactive]

OK, I think that we are pretty much in agreement that any future maintenance work should be notified in advance and a message displayed on the web site, oh and preferably not on a Saturday during the day time, just in case there are any unforeseen side effects.