Two UK web hosts go down

1and1 and Virgin

Hi

I've been experiencing problems today from sometime this afternoon. Amazingly I got through to someone at tech support at 1and1 who said they are experiencing difficulties with Virgin Media customers. I called Virgin who knew nothing about it. Meanwhile my business is without internet or email. Wonderful!

1and1 are german not english

1and1 are German not English, although they do host at lot of UK sites.

Virgin Muppets

Another ploy by Virgin to rip more money from their punters, when in fact it's them who've screwed up.

I can access my 1&1 server from a webproxy (over the Virgin Media network) and yet I cannot do so directly (on ports 25/80/110 etc).

Numpties have obviously killed something. Go figure.

My 1and1 works ok. Must be your computer!

My 1and 1 has been working all day with no downtime. Maybe you should blame your crappy computer, which is no doubt riddled with Russian or Chinese spyware, which is trying to bring down Europe's critcal infrastructure. In your case, consider yourself already "down".

Fasthosts something very odd going on

we have 23 servers with fasthosts and 3 are down at present. we have been told its our fault these are down by one person and then after a 45 minute wait on phone was told they now looking into again - something very uncomfortable is going on with this company and looking at 1 and 1 etc i would suggest worryingly some kind of serious hack attack is happening . Fasthosts service by the way is simply shocking and we are now leaving the company.

Definitely a Virgin Media problem

Anything hosted by 1&1 has vanished off the map from my home virgin network. No email, no web, no pings.

But use Tor as a proxy, and suddenly it's all back.

Hmm.

1and1

Definitely not a total whoopsie for 1&1. A shared hosting site that I administer is working just fine. Had a slightly slow moment earlier but otherwise just fine.

Re: 1and1? Bollocks, more like.

Erm, AJAX is client side javascript fetching a file from a web server. The server only has to serve files via HTTP for it to work (if it can't do that it's not a web server).

@supermeerkat

AJAX == Async XML + Javascript

Its nothing new, its not a special technology, and can be used on any OS that supports server side scripting and a client with an up to date browser.

Mods: I hate to bitch, but is it really beyond you to produce a working "Remember me" function?

Don't get me wrong, I love the form you've added, its really pretty and no doubt fools most people, but it'd be even better if it actually did what it says on the tin and worked.

Branston's FUBAR

Smokindope is spot on - I've just gone via Virgin's proxy and all my 1and1 sites are there.

I know 1and1 have shitty cust services but I've found their hosting to pretty reliable.

This is def a fubar by Branston's boys.

Virgin Media...

Virgin Media's web proxy has been fubared for the last week with periodic non-availability of a whole slew of websites, including, most SERIOUS OF ALL, El Reg :(

Knowing what a bunch of cock monkeys their support staff are, there was no way that I was going to call their premium rate "support" line to report the fault. It's been very obviously a fault with their systems as other ISPs have no issues. I'm certainly not going to call them just to be run through a poxy (unfortunately not a proxy) script regarding turning off all security, connecting via a USB connectionm restarting computer 5 times and the various other insane, inane and dumb things that they'll have you attempt before telling you that it's not their problem but yours and "thanks for the cash".

Virgin Media...

From Virgin Media's status page

Ticket

Ticket Number 604389

Time Stamp 29/11/2007 19:45

Priority P1

Status Opened

Department Outage Surveillence Team

Estimated Time Fix 29/11/07 22:44

Customers Affected Broadband Internet

Raised By Stephen Lipinski

Detailed Description

Some customers nationally may currently be experiencing difficulties accessing certain websites that terminate in Germany.

Popular websites include:

www.oneandone.co.uk

www.1and1.co.uk

www.space4k.com

www.eyevillas.com

Online games affected may include are:

OGAMES

World of Warcraft

Guild Wars

1-2-1

City of Heroes

City of Villains

Our support groups are now investigating this issue.

Virgin Media apologise for any inconvenience caused.

- Virgin Media Technical Support

----------------------------------------

It explains why I cant get to my webspace from my Virgin Media Broadband, but can via 3g on my mobile.

1&1&virgin=0

My connection to 1&1 has been down since 10am today.

I spoke to a numpty at 1&1 (disinterested and half a sleep) who said it was a Virgin Media issue.

Spoke to Virgin who knew nothing of the problem and said that he could access 1&1.co.uk with no issue.

Back to 1& 1 who admitted a fault with their end of the network, and that it woudl be resolved WITHIN 24hours!

Shocking!

GK

Fasthosts databases now down

I look after about three different hosting packages placed with Fasthosts, all using Linux and MySQL. The MySQL servers are now all innaccesible. Control panel and support login facilities are unavailable as well.

As soon as I regain control of my domain, I'll be on the next boat off Fasthosts' sinking island.

Fasthosts down too

Being on Virgin broadband and having Fasthosts web hosting I was unsure which was causing my problems.

But it's good old fasthosts down AGAIN, no ftp, control panel or database access, the recording says emergency maintenance timed at 3pm and it's now nearly 9pm with no fix time provided.

How many times is that this year *sigh*

Virgin Media need to sort their lives out

Well thanks virgin - not only can I not do any work tonight, I cant even check my email cos you have blocked several IP address ranges - what the f**k is the point really?

There is no way I am calling tech support to have some ball scratching monkey tell me to reboot my computer, restart my modem (scratch scratch), check if there are any lights flashing on my cable box, talk to their manager (scratch) and then finally come back with some bullshit about it somehow being my fault.

Virgin can suck my balls! If there were anyone else with a half decent internet service id be there but alas there isn't.

Hi Bukey by the way!

AJAX

I was enquiring if they had the AJAX .net controls installed on their windows servers, or whether they could be installed by a user.The morons I spoke to seemed unsure as to what AJAX was.

Traffic through as well as traffic terminating in Germany?

I’ll add to David Mason’s comment about it being not just inside Germany. I too am a Virgin Media broadband sufferer, I mean, user. I’d like to add that I can’t get to: royalmail.com, which seems to be in an address block in Denmark; and vodafone.cz, in the the Czech Republic. This would suggest it could be a routing problem for traffic going through Germany, as well as that terminating inside that country. Packets to those two sites don’t even appear to make it out of Virgin Media’s network. At least those to sites within Germany make it to the country, before disappearing into the ether.

Like Tim, third comment from the top, I realised early in the day that there was a problem. Unlike Tim, I also realise the stupidity of calling Virgin Media broadband support. I knew full well the level of service, from before the introduction of the 09 number. I guessed I would spend many minutes being told that it’s a problem with my equipment, before finally being told I couldn’t have a refund for the 25p/min cost, for trying to tell them they had a fault. I just sat on my hands and waited for enough other people to waste their money or someone high up in Virgin Media technical support to find they too couldn’t access important websites.

I really am beginning to hate being a Virgin Media customer.

Fasthosts Update

Well the reason we've been unable to access ftp, control panel and sql databases is because fasthosts have reset all the passwords.

But don't panic they are going to send the new ones out by royal mail, so websites should only be offline for a few days.

The email arrived at 1.10am and I was on the phone within a minute and after 30mins I've moved up from position 26 to 22, I pity the poor souls who are asleep, by the time they wake up in the morning the wait is likely to be longer than a tnt driver delivering cd's :)

VM at Fault

I know some people like to blame 1&1.

But it is VM that are having issues.

Although I'm a VM customer (xTelewest) I've had no issues.

I'm also a happy 1&1 customer.

Fasthosts Update 2

Don't bother calling, they have 1 person answering the phone and after 2 hours wait in the queue there is nothing they can or will do.

We HAVE to wait for royal mail to deliver the new password, if they are effecient and get them out today (friday) that could mean Saturday (2 days offline) or if not it's going to be next tuesday (5 days offline)

Needles to say I and no doubt plenty of other people are going to be seriously unhappy with this state of affairs.

In defence of 1&1

I've been on a shared hosting plan with 1&1 for seven years. In all that time, I've had about 5 outages, ranging from 3 minutes to two hours. Once they had a database problem that was a bit dramatic, but we were able to collectively recover from that. These are not guesses either, as I have the web site remotely monitored.

So, my view of 1&1 is that they offer a stable, feature-rich service at fair prices.

Virgin Media, on the other hand, consistently disappointed me. All of their services have suffered a tangible decline in quality since the VM rebranding, to the point where they are utterly incapable of providing the service for which you're paying. I'm no longer a VM customer, being happier to pay £5/mo for an 8Mb internet service that runs at 5Mb than to pay £37/mo for a 20Mb internet service that runs at 11Mb. Virgin's problem is that they need to drop the best part of £20bn on a to-the-house network upgrade. We'll see that just after I land in France at l'aeroport du cochon.

Fasthosts FTP sites and the Bots

@AC above and the other Fasthosts users. AC said "i would suggest worryingly some kind of serious hack attack is happening [at] Fasthosts".

Well, from my FTP Server and Firewall logs on a clients Fasthosts ADSL line, they have had serious hacker problems all year. Some Chinese hacker/Botnet slams into the front door at regular intervals with the same list of 2300 passwords. Trying common usernames (first names, etc). This has been going on most of the year.

It's a pretty dumb attack though... exactly the same thing week after week after week. Same password list, same usernames, attacking the same fixed IP Address. Lately it has changed to also looking for some weird port numbers...

Have you also noticed how the support site now has a captcha to enter when you want to change anything? Another clue to targeted hacks.

(I basically ignore the website as that is nothing more than a dumb billboard for this client of mine... don't really know or care what is happening to that...:))

You Virgin Moaners.....

I know you love to blame them, but I took an IT overview of the problem and actually ran some tests.

Packets were boing dropped as soon as they hit 1&1's network, so the original article is correct.

It wasn't a direct problem with Virgin Media, it was the hosting company in this case.

Any of you heard of Trace Route?

Re Paul Thomas..

It was Virgin at fault - they were blocking the response from the 1and1 routers, perhaps if you learnt how to read a Trace Route properly you wouldnt make yourself look such an idiot the next time you post.