back to article BT broadband is down: Former state monopoly goes TITSUP UK-wide

UK telco BT is suffering a major broadband outage: it appears the comms giant is caught up in a near-nationwide blackout, with more than 12,000 reports of service problems on Down Detector. The web connectivity monitor has been flooded with complaints from vast parts of the UK, from London and Birmingham to Manchester and …

  1. Anonymous Cowherder

    Mine's fine

    This is being posted via BT Infinity.

    1. Known Hero

      Re: Mine's fine

      Just connected to my server and its fine. South East.

    2. Dapprman
      Thumb Up

      Re: Mine's fine

      Me too - also SE. Actually got slightly better test figures at present ...

    3. future research

      Re: Mine's fine

      going to be fix by 18:00.

      I don't believe them either.

      http://btbusiness.custhelp.com/app/service_status

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Mine's fine

      I'm on TalkTalk so I'm fine.

      1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        Re: Mine's fine

        "I'm on TalkTalk so I'm fine."

        That's a definition of "fine" that's somewhat debatable.

    5. Scorchio!!
      Happy

      Re: Mine's fine

      I haven't even noticed a problem. I read something about the wrong sort of wind, snow and rain and disregarded it.

    6. MJI Silver badge

      Re: Mine's fine

      My wife was using it all day, no problems

  2. Andrew Barr

    No comments

    This must mean that most Reg readers are on BT!!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No comments

      Not me. I'm on a really good ISP.

      I won't name it because I don't want every asshole turning up and making it suck.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No comments

        Downvote for being an unhelpful git.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: No comments

          Once one reaches being an unhelpful github, does one get a medal.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: No comments

          No matter. My 4 bros-in-the-know saw the funny side, and upvoted.

  3. This post has been deleted by its author

  4. David Moore
    Flame

    Yep, been down here (Birmingham) for about an hour now. Fire icon for obvious reasons. ;-)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      What do you mean?

      Using smoke signals to get your emails?

      Mine is the one with the mobile in the pocket and unlimited data...

  5. Peter Hawkins

    Yep, BT broadband is down in Belfast too

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Inifinity is working fine in Bangor, though...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Are you in Bangor postcode LL or Bangor postcode BT?

        I have BT Infinity apparently working on the other side of the bridges from Bangor, LL.

        I am accessing it remotely via Plusnet (aka BT Sheffield) from Birmingham.

        Obviously both will stop working shortly, following this post.

        Neither www.bt.com nor www.btplc.com are responding from Birmingham.

        Only www.bt.com is reliably working from Bangor, btplc often gets a server timeout.

        All data from tests in last 20 minutes. YMMV.

        Anybody got a Dummies Guide to Disaster Tolerance going spare.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Are you in Bangor postcode LL or Bangor postcode BT?

          Bangor BT19, probably too late to say so now...

    2. tony72

      Down in Tring for the last couple of hours. Nice to BTs great disaster preparedness too; they have a major outage, and they can't even keep a website or phone line up to give a service status. Class.

  6. Necronomnomnomicon

    Whatever it is, it's massive

    We're connected to the internet, but we're seeing 15% packet loss to one of our main suppliers (who aren't on BT as far as we can tell). Time for them to invest in something like Netflix's ChaosMonkey.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Whatever it is, it's massive

      Whatever it is, it's massive

      Isn't that from "Independence Day"?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Down in Stoke on Trent

    ...system failed over to EE however.

    1. SE

      Re: Down in Stoke on Trent

      Looking forward to that BT EE acquisition?

  8. Crisp

    So that's the reason the phones are lighting up...

    Of course the customer can't even get through to do a Google search, but somehow from their point of view it's our site that's the problem.

  9. wolfetone Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Thanks BT

    Nearing the end of my working day, and I thought "it'd be nice to go home, relax, and chill out to some Netflix". Now I hear my broadband is broken? Do you not know what damage can be done to a relationship if there is no Netflix for our chill?

    1. Bert 1
      Facepalm

      Re: Thanks BT

      You do realise that if you're actually watching Netflix, you're doing it wrong :-)

      PS - down here too in Essex

      1. The Real Tony Smith

        Re: Thanks BT

        I foresee a BT Baby Boom

  10. Cynical Observer
    FAIL

    And this is why

    I cannot bring myself to put all comms eggs in one basket.

    Currently connecting via a tolerable 2Meg wireless tethered on the mobile as Infinity takes an infinite amount of time to return from having vanished up its own jacksy.

  11. Andrew Jones 2

    Probably no point asking them to comment, apparently the phones are dead, no reaching customer service, not a huge leap to think maybe they have no internet or email either. One might wonder if this is a denial of service attack, everything works right up to the CHAP authentication but the server never responds with either a success or failure message so after multiple tries a failure is assumed.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "One might wonder if this is a denial of service attack, everything works right up to the CHAP authentication but the server never responds with either a success or failure message so after multiple tries a failure is assumed."

      I wonder if it's possible in these days of always-on connections for a small hiccup to turn into a self-generated DDoS if the whole BT network blips and than EVERY customer modem tries to re-authenticate? Does anyone ever turn off their modem/router these days?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        self-generated DDoS

        "a self-generated DDoS if the whole BT network blips and than EVERY customer modem tries to re-authenticate?"

        In the days before fibre broadband, BT Retail didn't use the DSL username+password stuff that practically every other ISP used, they simply checked that the line ID presented to the kit was a valid line ID for BT Broadband.

        At that stage, some thought had apparently been given to this kind of thing. Probably all lost in the mists of time (and spreadsheets) now.

        1. x 7

          Re: self-generated DDoS

          "In the days before fibre broadband, BT Retail didn't use the DSL username+password stuff that practically every other ISP used, they simply checked that the line ID presented to the kit was a valid line ID for BT Broadband."

          not quite true - it did need a user name and password. But username could be anything@btbroadband.com

          Us contractors for BT usually set them up as user= "btuser@btbroadband.com" with password "btuser"

          That worked on all BT domestic connections

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: self-generated DDoS

            "That worked on all BT domestic connections"

            It would. 'Cos like I said, while the BT Wholesale CentralPlus service was around (which was designed for and exclusively used by BT Retail), it don't need no username and password for authentication, just the circuit ID, which is provided by the infrastructure rather than the end user. So all that typing may have been even less necessary than you thought.

            Feel free to look up BT's SIN for CentralPlus if you like (it's over a decade so I could be misremembering, but I don't think I am).

            1. Ben Tasker

              Re: self-generated DDoS

              It would. 'Cos like I said, while the BT Wholesale CentralPlus service was around (which was designed for and exclusively used by BT Retail), it don't need no username and password for authentication, just the circuit ID,

              Ever so slightly different now (or was 6-9 months ago, whenever they put my Infinity in).

              The username/password still isn't technically used by a HomeHub. The Modem's MAC is whitelisted and the authentication works/fails based on that - they managed to send out a batch of HH's without authorising them to connect them to the network, so I had a very confused engineer here at the time.

              As others have said, yesterday, CHAP was failing. Prior to that though packets were making it 1 hop into BT's network and then falling off the network

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: self-generated DDoS

                "Prior to that though packets were making it 1 hop into BT's network and then falling off the network"

                Falling off the network that **you and other BT customers** can see?

                I have no idea how this 21CN stuff works internally, but its 20CN predecessor was at one point using Cisco Express Forwarding (?) to get encapsulated Ethernet packets from BT's broadband customer-side kit (BRAS??? Not DSLAM) over to BT's core internal network and then out again to kit at the ISP in question.

                That journey from BT remote access kit to ISP kit could be multiple hops along BT's internal routed network, but none of those hops were normally visible to end users trying to use traceroute to diagnose what was going on. Think of it like tunneling, if you wish.

                Things may well be different by now.

                Fault resolution doesn't seem to be any better :(

                [I was there when Pipex invited mass market broadband in the UK, and there soon after when BTw were having major issues because of end-user packet fragmentation across their CEF network, and when BTw were denying that they had problems with exchange backhaul congestion, and... I've lost track/interest since then, it's all too depressingly (un)predictable].

  12. Halfmad

    The internet is down!

    Quick - To the internet!

    1. TheOtherHobbes

      Re: The internet is down!

      Over Christmas, it was Linode. Last week it was HSBC and Twitter. This week it's BT.

      The forces of darkness are spreading tentacles of digital chaos everywhere, aren't they?

    2. Tom 64

      Re: The internet is down!

      Well, have Jen pick it up again then!

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's times like this a good book doesn't go amiss, the cat pictures can wait.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I'm sure you can get a book of cat pictures, then you'll only need the internet for porn.

  14. Franco

    Ah well, this means no excuses to not paint the kitchen when I get home. :-(

    1. Known Hero
      Pint

      There is always Beer. This is always an excuse !

      1. chivo243 Silver badge
        Pint

        Right here next to the computer! ----------------------------->

      2. Chika
        Pint

        So who needs an excuse for beer?

  15. Mtech25
    Gimp

    Well we are no doubt minutes for a socital collapse here

    Anyone want to Join my Leather clad marauder gang? The ability to grow a green Mohawk is not necessary but will help in your application.

    1. theOtherJT Silver badge

      Re: Well we are no doubt minutes for a socital collapse here

      With the internet at my house cut off, I don't have anything better to do. I don't have a mohawk right now, but I can supply my own leathers. I mean, it's this, or stay at work, right?

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Well we are no doubt minutes for a socital collapse here

      Anyone want to Join my Leather clad marauder gang? The ability to grow a green Mohawk is not necessary but will help in your application.

      Finally a comprehensible message from HR!

  16. kmac499

    My Infinity is Up (Brackley Northants) but the VOIP box and it's VPN is Down near Tamworth.so no Office phones..

    The power of solar panels Ehh.. keeping my internet going; what's that grey fluffy thing in the sky; Oh No a Clou............beeeeeeeeeeeep

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's stone dead up the road in Chipping Norton. Our entire building contains internet people so everyone from a bunch of different companies is just milling around in confusion.

      It's like a fire drill or something.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Hello. I'm from BT. I'm here to help.

        "Our entire building contains internet people so everyone from a bunch of different companies is just milling around in confusion."

        I'd like to talk to you about the service level agreements available with BT's finest quality Broadband for Business.

  17. Banksy

    Not down here

    No problems for me today, on BT Infinity.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Reason?

    Incompetence or something more malicious?

    1. Ivan Headache

      Re: Reason?

      Talk Talk having a sideswipe.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Reason?

      ...cable theft again perhaps?

    3. Captain Queeg

      Re: Reason?

      The article denies anything malicious - but I imagine BT treat their network maliciously enough without the help of outsiders...

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Presumably that’d explain why the Mrs is bleating about the BT YouView going titsup for everything other than standard FreeView stuff…

    Anon because, well she reads this…

  20. sysconfig

    Down here too

    They've had increasing latency and packet loss throughout the day, but since around 2pm it's completely unusable (Infinity, south-west Essex).

    Plan B, that is Giffgaff 4G tethering here, works well enough for the most important stuff, though.

  21. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

    To Infinity and beyond. Or not.

    If only BT would choose today to give me their regular monthly cold call to try and entice me into leaving my current ISP and joining BT; I could waste more of their time telling them why I won't and would enjoy it even more than usual.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: To Infinity and beyond. Or not.

      "If only BT would choose today to give me their regular monthly cold call to try and entice me into leaving my current ISP and joining BT; I could waste more of their time telling them why I won't and would enjoy it even more than usual."

      They have been trying but their IP phones seem to be down at the moment.

  22. future research

    grumble, grumble

    Failed just before 15:00 for me. changed over from FTTC to old bethere ADSL2 and now waiting.

    I bet they are going to be slower to drop to just the FTTC now. :)

  23. PabloPablovski

    BBC news 24 just reported widespread disruption to BT services so it must be true... No response from BT as yet.

    1. Martin Summers Silver badge

      So it's reported on a tech site that reports tech news and you doubted it's veracity until you saw it on the BBC? Wow.

      1. Adam 52 Silver badge

        I think the BBC strives for a higher level of journalistic quality than El Reg. I hope that doesn't offend because the BBC does aim high (doesn't always achieve but does aim).

        1. x 7

          "I think the BBC strives for a higher level of journalistic quality than El Reg"

          it may strive

          it doesn't succeed.

  24. Steve Kerr

    Dammit

    Working from home, connection still up, no ping drop or anything, 1ms ping time.

    Bugger, better carry on working......

    1. Chris King

      Re: Dammit

      Probably a case of "If it's working, DON'T reboot the router/modem".

      My AAISP line is up at the moment, but they've issued a status update:

      https://aastatus.net/apost.cgi?incident=2207

      1. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

        Re: Dammit

        > Probably a case of "If it's working, DON'T reboot the router/modem"

        There may be an element of that, but we've had customers "just go offline" - router not rebooted, just lost connectivity. I did notice that downstairs where the centre manager has a BT Infinity line that the router was showing a red "b" so it's not just lost packets.

        Just checked on another customer router - the router hasn't been rebooted, but they've been offline.

        Something else interesting, two customers I monitor have dynamic IPs but they've come back up with the same IPs that they had before the outage. That's unheard of - BT normally force an IP change on every re-connect which is a bit of PITA.

  25. AndrueC Silver badge
    Happy

    Puts me in mind of the last chapter of A Fire Upon the Deep.

    I wonder what (who?) the countermeasure was aimed at this time?

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Syrian refugees or Donald Trump.

  26. martin 62

    not just broadband the operator is affected too

    Operator services are down dialing 100 to speak to someone gets you an engaged tone dialing 150 gets you a network busy message as does the fault checker line (0800 169 0199) if you do manage to get through to someone their systems are down also got told to phone back in 4 hours.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: not just broadband the operator is affected too

      "Operator services are down dialing 100 to speak to someone gets you an engaged tone dialing 150 gets you a network busy message as does the fault checker line (0800 169 0199)"

      All working from here in suburban south Birmingham on a standard BT line.

      0800 1690199 option 1 (Broadband faults) goes to an engaged tone.

      I think it needs rebooting.

      In other (hopefully unrelated, but...) news: any Gridwatch fans out there?

      Have you noticed the huge hiccups in the charts, just before Thursday/Friday midnight last week, and then again today at around half past midday? Odd.

      Still, at least we've still got electricity.

  27. ukgnome
    Mushroom

    Also Virgin-Media are having a few niggles.....it's ISIS isn't it!

    1. TRT Silver badge

      It's ISIS isn't it?

      Worse. Microsoft.

      What's the odds on some piece of control equipment having auto-updated to Windows 10 just?

      1. Andrew Jones 2

        Re: It's ISIS isn't it?

        Re Win10 upgrade - Oh I really really hope this is the reason!

      2. Chika

        Re: It's ISIS isn't it?

        Are you saying that this is a part of the infrastructure that is capable of "updating" to W10?

        More likely WME...

    2. Andrew Jones 2

      I have no doubt it will be blamed on a failed server upgrade and that will be it, they won't bother to explain how a failed server upgrade kills so many different systems or why no backup system spring into life. Something must be seriously wrong if you can't even dial 100. I haven't checked but I hope this hasn't also affected to ability to dial 999 or I can see BT being hit with some big fines.

    3. breakfast Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Dot dot dot daesh

      Well ISIS it or ISN'TISN'T it? Make your mind up!

    4. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Yeah, had a few drop-outs on TV and internet yesterday according to my wife. VM internet dropped out for about 10 minutes this afternoon around about 2pm-ish, coincidently the time BT seem to have dropped off the map.

      On the other hand, everything seem to be working faster than usual. Maybe all those busy websites are not so busy just now :-)

  28. Doctor_Wibble
    Black Helicopters

    Government installing black boxes

    You know it's the truth, these things always coincide with a government press release about the dangers of the internet. Or if there's no press release, that just proves it's secret.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Up and down in Hampshire

    Keep getting drop outs last 5 minutes or so then it's back to normal. Thought it was just me, but now I know better. Not even with BT!

  30. Zola

    BT ADSL, South London has been fine all day

    See title.

    1. Ebec

      Re: BT ADSL, South London has been fine all day

      not all of south london's ok my servers dropped 1hr ago

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    North East OK

    No problems to report in NE1, although BT colleagues tell me lots of their internal systems are on the fritz.

  32. Steve Gill

    From the beeb

    "It is true that we are down at the moment. We are aware of the problems and are working on them as fast as we can."

    "Sorry if your [sic] are experiencing network problems. Engineers are on site now. We will keep you updated,"

    @BTCare

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      And the Beeb have just signed with BT to supply their high bandwidth site to site connectivity. I wonder if those systems would be affected by this too?

      1. AndrueC Silver badge
        Boffin

        Different BT. This sounds like a BT Retail problem. The BBC will have (I assume) signed up with openreach.

        1. ~chrisw

          Not quite

          Openreach don't supply products like MPLS directly to end user customers, they handle network maintenance and local access networks.

          BBC will have signed up through BTwholesale, Global Services or a bespoke BTnet arrangement. They're not completely getting rid of Vodafone either.

          The irony of most of BT's web sites currently being unreachable is not lost on me. (Why bother hosting it all separately, just fire it everything on the same server cluster...)

          ---

          See also, because I still can't put more than a couple of inline links in comment replies:

          http://www.homeandwork.openreach.co.uk/Our-responsibilities/

          https://www.btwholesale.com/pages/static/products-services/ip-connect-uk.htm

          http://www.globalservices.bt.com/uk/en/products/ip_connect_uk

          http://www.bt.net/info/

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Affecting Lincolnshire too

    Cue the usual comments about the reasons George Boole left.

    1. Chika
      Trollface

      Re: Affecting Lincolnshire too

      Do we hafta?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Affecting Lincolnshire too

        Rules are rules, man. Don't make me get out my Dennis of Grunty Fen CDs.

  34. pewpie

    SShh..You feel that?

    The web just got a little less sanctimonious.

  35. Tezfair

    Clients down in Devon, Cornwall, Leicester and Edinburgh. Looks like BT are getting on top of it as our connections are coming back up.

  36. Yugguy

    Dead here in CV2

    Fail.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Dead here in CV2

      Please don't post your CV2

      1. x 7

        Re: Dead here in CV2

        Dead in CV2? Nothing new. Most boring place in the country to go out in at night.

        Makes Milton Keynes look sophisticated

      2. tiggity Silver badge

        Re: Dead here in CV2

        Upvote for credit card security punnage

  37. Rob84
    FAIL

    Down in Brighton

    BT Infinity connection down in Brighton (BN2). Router was saying the PPPoE authentication couldn't complete after I rebooted it in the hope a quick switch it off and on again might help.

  38. mutantsheep

    High Order Failure - London PoP

    Looks a lot like there's a 'high order failure' on the BT network in their London PoP, trace below.

    If the problem is isolated to London, it might mean that northerners will avoid the problem and be routed through the ManIX PoP. Anything hosted in London though, or anyone in the UK who's connectivity will traverse a London PoP/LINX connectivity is screwed!

    2c3-xe-1-0-1-0.uk-lon1.eu.bt.net 166.49.208.14 gb 17.414 ms

    t2c3-xe-2-2-1-0.uk-lon1.eu.bt.net 166.49.208.114 gb 18.650 ms

    t2c3-xe-2-2-2-0.uk-lon1.eu.bt.net 166.49.208.116 gb 19.462 ms

    9 166-49-211-239.eu.bt.net 166.49.211.239 gb 18.202 ms 18.221 ms

    166-49-211-241.eu.bt.net 166.49.211.241 gb 18.220 ms

    10 core1-te0-3-0-10.ealing.ukcore.bt.net 109.159.254.103 gb 22.484 ms

    core2-te0-4-0-7.ealing.ukcore.bt.net 109.159.254.162 gb 22.417 ms

    11 * * *

    1. ricardian

      Re: High Order Failure - London PoP

      Our island (Stronsay, Orkney) lost connectivity too. Blue light on the router but trying to connect produced an error message about proxy. Came back around 4pm but some sites (including this one) are glacially slow to load.

  39. JonWright

    Problems!!

    Down in East Devon (Business Infinity) as well - having to resort to mobile connection!

  40. tomboley

    I work in tech support for an EPOS company and we were getting so many calls about "we can't take card payments and access the internet" blah blah blah (because they seem to think we are responsible for more than just the tills). This has been going on since about 2pm, mostly London, although did also get a call from Worthing, near Brighton

    I've spent most of the past hour waiting for a fun news story to read. I wonder if BT will drop us a statement as to why they done TITSUP

    1. Andy Livingstone

      Really?

      You expect EPOS Users to know where else to contact?

  41. tomboley

    Just noticed we are getting major packet drops to one of Google's closest servers but to a small French server I own, we have next to no drops

    I guess London is broked

    http://puu.sh/mTaYE.png

  42. Matt Oldred

    DNS?

    Noticed it down around 14:30. I changed the forwarder on our DNS box to 8.8.8.8 instead of BT's servers and it is working fine (as fine as we get hear in the sticks anyway)

  43. 73N

    I'm on BT Infinity in Birmingham and the only problem I've had is connecting to my work VPN in Surrey which is also on an infinity connection - looks like I've got the afternoon off work! Thanks BT!

  44. Hairyscreech

    Just BT then?

    SKY seems to be working fine and IIRC they use BT's equipment.

    Some of out customers are reporting they are on BT and have been down for about an hour now.

    1. AndrueC Silver badge

      Re: Just BT then?

      SKY seems to be working fine and IIRC they use BT's equipment.

      Only some of it..and you have to be careful what you mean by 'BT'.

      Sky use the local loop which is owned and operated by BT openreach. For ADSL they have their own DSLAM inside each exchange but for FTTC (Fibre) they are reliant on openreach DSLAMs in the cabinet. Sky may also at some (most?) exchanges use openreach cabling to get to the nearest Sky POP.

      This fault seems to be a BT Retail issue (I suspect a server room outage of some kind). There is no relationship between Sky and BT Retail so no reason to expect faults on one to impact the other. Think of it like a major fire at a DHL distribution hub. All couriers use the same road network but only parcels passing through that DHL hub will be affected. Other couriers can carry on quite happily.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Just BT then?

        "This fault seems to be a BT Retail issue (I suspect a server room outage of some kind)."

        I'm on Plusnet (not exactly BT Retail). I've been able to get to here and various other places, but I've been struggling to get to bt.com and btplc.com.

        Maybe, just maybe, there's more to this than a BT Retail fault.

        Here's what the normally well informed ADSLguide/thinkbroadband have as a news item so far:

        http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7336-bt-websites-down-and-out.html

        [...]

        The main bt.com, btwholesale.com, openreach.co.uk sites appear to be down, we have fired off a question to try and find out why.

        This does not appear to be affecting peoples broadband connections, as based on activity on our speed test we are still seeing the expected numbers and speeds for this time of day.

        [...]

        1. AndrueC Silver badge
          Meh

          Re: Just BT then?

          Your own post seems to explain that adequately:

          "I've been struggling to get to bt.com and btplc.com."

          and (from TBB):

          "The main bt.com, btwholesale.com, openreach.co.uk sites appear to be down"

          So nothing there to suggest that the fault has 'spread' to Plusnet. Just a failure on BT's network that affected some of its customers and also knocked some of their web sites off the wider web.

  45. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mostly down for us

    We have a number of VPN connections with BT and whilst a lot of them are affected by this, the odd one or two are still showing as working... Our service provider have amusingly told us they aren't sure if there is a major BT outage as they are unable to access any of BT's service portals to check!

  46. damiandixon

    Bt down in west sussex

    No internet since 3pm.

    BT website down. BT help lines not responding.

  47. MHZawadi

    Plusnet working

    I'm on planet in Wiltshire, have had rdp going all afternoon.

    Planet user tools does shows a big issue http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/mso.php

  48. funroll

    CHAP okay but no IP negotiation

    Looks like chap authentication is working fine, but they're not handing out any IP's in the LCP handshake. Was offering me 0.0.0.0 for a while and now just timing out after CHAP.

    1. Alister

      Re: CHAP okay but no IP negotiation

      It's slightly strange, 'cos at one point my WAN IP was showing as a non-routable 172.16.99.207 - dunno where that came from.

  49. lsces

    Finally have a connection back. Some lines down in the road here, and some apparently OK. I've two lines going different roots to the exchange, but both out, some neighbours also out, but some still OK. ALL on BT contracts.

  50. ~chrisw
    Pint

    Ah, BT outages. The first of the year is always so sweet.

    I usually now refer to this ever more accurate video from 2007.

    Time to evac to the pub (for its free wifi, natch)

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Windows

      Bah! The situation shown is business as normal in our office whenever the "planning" is being rejigged, which happens randomly between 11:00 and 18:00. It is positively correlated with the "most important meeting of this week" being suddenly canceled for unstated reasons a hour or so earlier.

  51. Wayland Sothcott 1

    Core routers caught fire

    failover routers were next to them so also burned.

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Core routers caught fire

      failover routers were next to them (DOH!) also also burned.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Core routers caught fire

        [Citation needed]

  52. Terry 14

    Been down in Letchworth since 14:45 hrs and still down. It went down in South Bedfordshire at about 15:30 hrs and has just come back up at 17:00 hrs.

    1. GregC

      Seems to be back up in the Bedford area now too.

  53. Terry 14

    Just been to www.openreach.com and there is the following message "Sorry, the Openreach Portal is currently unavailable due to unplanned maintenance activities. We aim to restore service as soon as possible. Please try again later."

  54. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    PLA Unit 61398 says

    All your Infinity network are belong to us.

    1. Chika
      Trollface

      Re: PLA Unit 61398 says

      I'd say "We get signal" but really that's just not the case, is it?

  55. Jasp
    Mushroom

    We have about 60 out of 140 sites on BT. We only saw 3 go down on our NMS.. 2 of them at 14:20. One of them is back up now. I think we've been lucky.

  56. yaxxbarl

    Virgin Net's email is also down...

    Are these things connected, I ask?

  57. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Could be...

    The BT Network Operation Centre is suggesting capacity was exceeded as many peeps download and install Windows 10.

  58. MrHairy
    Flame

    BT Business Infinity

    Still not properly up yet, have a BT Business Infinity line working slower than a 56k modem at the moment and bizzarely UK internet addresses seem to be OK (ish), but should I wish to log in to any other service or page from elsewhere in the world its really struggling and most of the time unable to connect.

  59. alpine

    Talktalk's been fine.

    As it usually has been for me for 6 years now.

  60. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's probably a feeble effort by Cameron to stop people posting everywhere about how dire his supposed deal with Brussels is.

  61. John Crisp

    Move to Spain....

    I'm fine here in my little pueblo pop. 2700 in Spain, but the office in deepest darkest Essex is Kaput.

    Senior source at BT said 'we have a serious outage but I still haven't got a f*ckin clue whats up. Just a stream of unhhappy calls to my mobile.....'

    At least he bothered to call me back to tell me... bless.

  62. x 7

    which day did BT complete the EE takeover? Am I right in thinking yesterday?

    Has a techie shown his disgust by pulling the plug? A real life BOFH in the heart of BT?

  63. This post has been deleted by its author

  64. mikemurk

    Still off in Cumbria... but i imagine that's because of all the ups and downs in the fibre between us and the big smoke...

  65. Dr. G. Freeman

    [former BT Business Broadband call centre drone, ex-brother in law BT Openreach engineer]

    Contacted ex-colleague at BT wholesale (they who own the cables, servers), their reply

    "The Hamster that powers the servers has escaped, it's hiding under the rack and not coming out for carrot, so management having meeting to see what vegetable to try next. Decision thought to be made sometime next week, [colleague #2] is looking for the vacuum cleaner and a late opening pet shop."

    1. x 7

      "so management having meeting to see what vegetable to try next."

      BT Management are all vegetables anyway. None of them are going to catch the hamster

  66. Jon Smit

    Cat attack

    on the BT tower been reported on Goodie News.

  67. psychonaut

    2 customers down in bracknell

    god knows how many others. knowing my customers they are probably trying to email me for help....

  68. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Will somebody please think of the CHILDREN!!!!!!

  69. The Dark Side
    Mushroom

    Been Down here in Norwich UK, Could connect but no data till about 20:00 all seem to be working.

    Talk of DDOS think it was done via NTP as router had trouble connecting to NTP servers to sync time.

    Just an idea??

    1. Andrew Jones 2

      The CHAP authentication was failing here - there was simply no response. Those who weren't kicked off - were provided with a private 172 address. Still no explanations as to why their sites were down, and more importantly - why pretty much all phone numbers for BT including - the operator were down. Surely there are backup systems in place?

  70. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Rumour has it...

    ...that someone at BT actually attempted to follow the dotty advice given out by their own broadband support call centre. Naturally, network carnage ensued.

  71. AlexS
    Holmes

    Fuck no porn for me tonight...

    (Where is the anonymous coward option?)

  72. AustinTX

    Bungled upgrades

    Screwed up while installing fiber taps!

  73. This post has been deleted by its author

  74. DrBobMatthews

    Well that will teach all the morons who use Faceache and Twatter, their inane comments just add to the unnecssary traffic and reduce the capacity of the network.

  75. spiny norman

    All fixed by 17:30?????

    In the wilds of rural Warwickshire it went down at about 3pm and reappeared on the stroke of midnight.

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