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back to article iiNet struggles through five-day outage to get thousands back online

Engineers at ISP iiNet are still battling to restore connectivity to subscribers left for days without internet access in Western Australia. The telco – gobbled up by TPG this year for AU$1.56bn – reckons the trouble started on December 27, but some folks say they dropped offline on Christmas Day. According to the ISP's …

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  1. Tim99 Silver badge

    For me, only a couple of hours

    We have the NBN managed by iinet and were down for a couple of hours at the start of the outage.

    Interestingly I could ping most of the sites I visit including El Reg (CloudFlare with a time of 57ms); and iinet's own DNS server (with a time of 20ms) but no web traffic. Web pages just timed out.

    Incidentally, when I typed in "iinet" my browser's autocorrect changed it to inept. Perhaps it knows that when Mike Malone left inept, it became a bean-counter's company. I also have had some previous business dealings with TPG before the take-over, I don't expect that things will improve much...

    2 0 Reply
    1. mark 177
      Reply Icon

      Re: For me, only a couple of hours

      It thoroughly confused me. I'm on the NBN, and it looked like I had a connection but no DNS.

      I wasted an hour power cycling my router, NBN box, etc. I finally called iinet, who told me that I was affected due to my connection to the NBN in Applecross. That surprised me a bit as I live in East Victoria Park, quite a few km away.

      I think I lost Internet for about half a day.

      0 0 Reply
  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Western Australia

    AKA: WA or Wait Awhile

    - Anon, Perth

    1 0 Reply
  3. Phil Kingston

    iinet's gone from bad to worse in the last few years. It's as if they've just given up - customer support, infrastructure, everything.

    With them not commenting on the cause, one can't help but speculate they lost some ageing, crucial bit of kit they couldn't be bothered to properly replace when it was due for retirement.

    3 1 Reply
  4. fredds

    DNS?

    If tim99 could ping various places on the net, then it would seem that iinet/TPGs dns server was not working. Maybe they have gone the same way as telstra, who earlier this year rolled out automatic updates to their modems, pointing to telstra's dns servers. When it proved possible to get around this "update", they did another one which prevented changes.

    2 0 Reply
  5. -tim

    How low can it go?

    I have email from Simon and Mike going back far more than a decade. I've been a player in the early days of uunet, savvis and others. If this ever happens to Internode, I'm going to find my "Internet startup" hat and put it on and do my best to put TPG out of business.

    This is their 1st and final warning.

    2 0 Reply
    1. The Blacksmith
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      Re: How low can it go?

      Sure Tim, when you want to do that let us know. I'd jump from Internode to a competent technical ISP as soon as I can get the phone dialed. Given that NBN is still almost 2 years away (yes, H2, 2017 they claim!) I'm not holding my breath, but once NBN is everywhere running an ISP over their pipes is just a business decision (plus peering, backhaul and a million other costs).

      Not to be too negative, but these days an ISP is all about scale, the barriers to entry are high, and to get customers to churn to you you need to give excellent service (and good data caps as well). However, those lock in contracts that TPG keeps pushing will slow down your uptake rate.

      Sad really.

      3 0 Reply
    2. Trixr
      Reply Icon

      Re: How low can it go?

      Internode support has gone downhill in recent years as well. My partner has an ongoing issue with the telecom pit outside her house. Every time there's a rainstorm, speeds go to about 12kbps. Every time we ring up and do the dance of "please test with another modem". Why we need to do this when it's the same issue every time - at least half a dozen times - is beyond me.

      They used to send out their own pre-configured modems to test with, complete with a pre-paid box to send it back, but no longer do so. . Since most people don't keep spare ADSL modems in their back pockets, it takes days to track down one we can "test" with - many people in this town are on cable.

      When I enquired as to why they no longer offer test modems, it's because "we kept losing them". Well, if the replacement cost ended up on the next bill for the people who kept "losing" them, they'd probably find more of the modems finding their way back.

      Also, I don't know why there's all this about "if Internode goes the same way..." They got bought out by iiNet years ago, and I presume we're all in the TPG happy family now.

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  6. Medixstiff

    Never had an issue but then again I use my VPN providers DNS Servers, so maybe that's why?

    0 0 Reply
  7. mark 177

    Anf the Agony Continues....

    Had another outage last night. Not only me - I checked and several other NBN subscribers had it.

    Since I'm on NBN, I couldn't use my house phone to call iinet support. And then I found I had no credit on my mobile - and the only way I know to top it up is via the Web! So I couldn't even report the fault.

    Fortunately the outage did not last too long, but this is really appalling - the first time I have known iinet to have widespread continued outages, as opposed to just my own line going down.

    Surely El Reg's well- developed network of sources can tell us what's going on here. Can't it?

    0 0 Reply
    1. mark 177
      Reply Icon

      Re: And the Agony Continues....

      And it is still going on.......another 20 minute outage on NBN today. I am now writing to complain as they won't even tell us what is wrong.

      Whatever happened to the telco standard 99.999% network availability? iinet exceeded its 2016 outage allowance by 5th January!

      This is easily the worst internet service I have had in over 10 years with iinet.

      1 0 Reply

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