"There has been absolutely no suggestion he took the router config data with him when he left the building"
Shouldn't this be accompanied by "at the time of writing the start of the start of this sentence"
Less than 24 hours after BT Openreach chief Joe Garner quit the telco's troubled infrastructure division, BT customers all over the UK are saying they can't get online – with the apparent network outage possibly taking up to three days to fix. The outage manifested as a packet routing problem, with some unfortunate souls …
From BT's service status:
"Glencarse - 01738 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)
Belford - 01668 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)
North Weald - 01992 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)
Husband Bosworth - 01858 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)
Buckland Newton - 01300 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)
Glenwherry - 02825 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)
Brenchley- 01892 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)
Ferndown- 01202 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)
Treforest - 01443 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)
Rothley - 01162 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)
Dinas Mawddwy - 01650 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)
Ashreigney - 01769 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)
Watton - 01377 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)
Chichester - 01243 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)
Swansea - 01792 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)
New Cumnock - 01290 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)
Churston - 01803 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)
Colwall - 01684 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)
Painswick - 01452 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)
Lydbrook - 01594 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)
New Cross - 0203 0207 0208 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)
Broadstairs - 01843 (estimated clear date 19/11/2015)
Bayston Hill - 01743 (estimated clear date 19/11/2015)
Burton Bradstock - 01308 (estimated clear date 19/11/2015)
Magherafelt - 02879 (estimated clear date 19/11/2015)
Bunbury - 01829 (estimated clear date 19/11/2015)
Yockleton - 01743 (estimated clear date 19/11/2015)
Lisbellaw - 02866 (estimated clear date 18/11/15)
Alyth - 01828 (estimated clear date 18/11/15)
Epping - 01992 (estimated clear date 18/11/15)
St Boswells - 01835 (estimated clear date 18/11/15)
Midhurst - 01730 (estimated clear date 18/11/15)
Sedgley - 01902 (estimated clear date 18/11/15)
Carrickmore - 02880 (estimated clear date 18/11/15)
Salisbury - 01722 (estimated clear date 18/11/2015)
Walthamstow - 0203 0208 (estimated clear date 18/11/2015)"
Feel free to Google some of the locations to see how all over the UK this is.
Re: "From BT's service status:"
An impressive list, which raises a question as just how their network is structured and hence whether sufficient consideration has been given to redundancy and avoidance of single points of failure.
Unfortunately, for those who like to throw stones, I expect all of the other major ISP's to have similar problems in their infrastructures.
It went down for me at about 9pm last night for certain routes. It started working again at about 1pm today.
The worst thing was there was no easy way to report it to BT, you can only report a BT broadband issue by going to their website and running the broadband live test, which we couldn't access!
24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The best time to call is
between 12 noon and 4pm.
Please make sure you're at your computer when you call.
From a landline: 0800 111 4567
From a mobile: 0330 123 4567*
From abroad: +44 179 359 6931**
Seriously, people should stop voluntarily sending ALL their DNS traffic to Google. All the sites you visit, all the mail servers you check, all the sync services you use, all the FTP connections you make etc. all sent to Google.
Just use a OpenNIC Project server near you: https://www.opennicproject.org
"Just use a OpenNIC Project server near you: https://www.opennicproject.org"
Oh, really? Let's see those servers... From their page:
81.2.237.32 (ns1.cz) -- 95.79% uptime
31.14.133.188 (ns5.it) -- 94.30% uptime
212.47.233.10 (ns1.idf.fr) -- 84.65% uptime
89.18.27.34 (ns1.buh.ro) -- 89.33% uptime
Most interesting. So, because you're paranoid about Google and its 99.999% uptime, and its speed, and its not giving a damn where you connect to, you're willing to go to a server in the Czech Republic or Romania. Or, God help us, Italy or France. And put up with uptimes of as low as 85%. I _do_ wonder what the Czech, Romanian, Italian, or French governments might want to have to say about stuff flying past their borders. I'm pretty sure that the only diff between them and the US and UK governments is the level of power and competence. Sadly, I do not usually think of 'competence' and 'Italian Government', or 'Romanian Government', or even 'French Government' in the same sentence. Insufficient data about 'Czech Government', but a quick Google (yes...) indicates that they aren't much, if any, better. (I'm not sure if there's been a competent government in Italy since Ferderick II was Holy Roman Emperor...) (Yes, I know, the Holy Roman Empire was not Holy, was not Roman, and was not an Empire. Now go away.)
And, of course, I'm on the wrong side of the Atlantic. The site doesn't list any servers over here. What, no Canadians? Not even any Mexicans? Colombians? Anyone?
I'll admit to using OpenNIC for a while, it was after reading a post here on El Reg I tried it.
Having done so I think their 80% + figures are a bit over the top.
My experience was so bad I was looking at local problems before I realised OpenNIC were so crap.
I really didn't believe they could be that bad, another life lesson learned.
I like life lessons, they remind me I am both stupid and clever at the same time.
Now I know BT (Infinity for Business) do oddball things with DNS lookups but I've found for the last god-knows-how-many-months that if I use the router as the DNS server, I get no lookups.
If I change the clients to use, say 8.8.8.8, then everything is peachy.
It's all a bit odd but I've been too lazy to do any real digging.
Got rid of the BT HomeHub in favour of a Draytek and have tended to pick from this list of DNS servers for the last year
http://public-dns.tk/nameserver/gb.html.
Did have to change servers on one occasion as the DNS server was unreachable but otherwise, it tends to be fairly reliable.
If nothing else, my thoughts are that using the DNS servers of one ISP when the broadband is provided by a second should confuse mix things up nicely. :-)
Re: Infinity for Business
That does raise a question as to whether this fault was wholly within the BT residential network or also included their (BT's) business customers. Certainly as a user of the OpenReach Wholesale network, I've not noticed any issues with my service.
I must say i've had excellent service from BT. Went to Vispa for a while and then returned to BT. Even managed to get BT to replace phone line from pole to house as it was an old 2wire thing with the shielding hanging off. Solid FTTC (70/18 down/up) and reliable uptime. I work from home 100% too.
Just giving another point of view.
Yeah, I hate BT but at the end of the day...they own the infrastructure and for 363 days of the year its pretty darn smooth. I have seen so many customers struggle with this alternative ISP and that 'boutique' ISP, the latest cool ISP etc. etc.
They all start off with blazing speeds but they all fail or slow to a crawl in the end.
I tell them "just go back to BT!" They moan, they grumble but the "Hey my internet is really slow!" moans dry up.
Just how it is. I do make sure they dump the Homehubs though.
I switched to BT as they were the only ISP able to provide FTTC at the time - and have been very pleasantly surprised. I've had one fault (earth leak in the copper from the cabinet causing intermittent slow speed), which received a visit and repair the same day I reported it. I had a partial outage this morning - some routes were unreachable but that now appears to be fixed. Two partial outages lasting a few hours each over a period of 3 years is not something I would consider to be bad service - and the rest of the time my real download speed (not line speed) has never fallen below 50Mbps (which is as likely to be due to a bottleneck at the server end rather than my end), and is usually sitting just above 70Mbps. I usually download between 100GB - 250GB per week.
My experience of BT is - going on holiday for NINE days; then coming back to find my phone bill, a red letter dated the day after the phone bills date, a disconnection notice dated 2 days after that, and no phone.
I spent nearly a YEAR arguing with them over that, they point blank refused to do anything or to waive the "reconnection" fee, so I ditched my phone line for several years, and only got it replaced when LLU came in.
The joke was firmly on them, because despite cutting off the phone service, my internet connection worked right up to the line being physically disconnected.
Of course, OpenReach and BT are SUPPOSED to be 100% operationally independent - so which do you think is the case:
1) You would have been able to get Openreach to do the same work via another ISP
OR
2) There is a "special arrangement" between BT Retail and Openreach.
If (2), then perhaps someone should tell OFCOM (as if they didn't already know!)
Strangely, independent ISPs seem to have a far better handle on getting OR to do repair work, I have heard BT people moan that the BT system is so poor, it is nearly impossible to track a job request and make sure OR are on the ball.
Certainly my experience is that the small boys get BTOR out fast, whereas BT drag their feet forever (meaning years in one case!!!)
When were you with Vispa? They used to be a really great ISP, and got problems sorted out very quickly, but a few years ago the co-founder got forced out and an arse took over, since then it have been dire. I quit, and followed the old owner to his new ISP Aquiss.
"...[Anyone stupid enough to use BT as their ISP deserves what they get]..."
Let's see what I get:
Excellent UK based service on the only occasions (twice in almost 4 years) that I've called;
Next business day engineer on site;
Uptime that has been so close to 100% it may as well be;
Supposedly a 20:1 contention ratio (not that I've noticed one way or the other)
Apparently, no blocking or forced traffic management based slowdown.
Superb up/down connection and throughput speeds, even over wifi.
No closed ports - can (and have) hosted Exchange, websites etc.
And no, I don't work for or have any affiliation with them. I'm just a happy customer that pays a decent amount for a decent service rather than being one of the many cocks out there that wants to pay feck all for my broadband and expects the same levels of service.
OK I have weird DNS issues but I just use different ones on each client I have. I can live with that.
The test proved the main packet sniffing hub in Cheltenham is going to need a few beellions of investment if it is to slurp the entire UK data stream in search of Salah Abdeslam or any other bad guys du jour, without interrupting the streaming of cat videos. Otherwise ISPs will have a lot more pissed-off customers to deal with.
Government announces additional funding for GCHQ. What a coincidence ;)
No outage here in Scotland - and for the first time in months (nay years) - I'm actually getting my speeds as advertised. I guess the lack of data on the rest of the network means there is lots of CAPACITY. Something BT to be woefully short of. Even iPlayer isn't buffering hahahaha - off to do some serious downloads (all those ISO images n stuff of course :D
Depends how hard you complain and how high you get.
I have the mobile number of the tech I deal with. If he is unavailable he leaves me the contact details of a colleague. Before he goes unavailable.
Mails are answered usually in seconds.
Top class, but I had to fight for it.... still, he can't help the fact that a 50 pair underground cable has 49.5 pairs broken (I never knew adsl could still run on a single wire, albeit at a reduced speed). That came after an incident with a neighbour (50 metres away) with a dodgy PSU on an occasionally used computer that caused REIN or SHINE that took weeks to pin down. But we got it sorted and I learned a lot.
Even when the faults are closed I can contact him anytime.....
Ironically a friend was with Virgin and the last 3 years suffered huge problems. Virgin blamed OR and vice versa. His support phone bill was immense "but they are cheaper"
Eventually on my (insane) suggestion he went to BT. 2 days after the same issues. One call, and a day later, the engineer reported there was a fault on a bit of kit in the exchange that would have also affected several other users.....
Problem solved.
Regrettably until OR are separated completely, and publicly reachable & accountable, this will continue....
I still wouldn't generally recommend BT, but we are in the sticks and have little choice.