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[Mr Skrunts]

Was anyone else off line last night?

I had company till the early hours but when I logged on the net was down, rang my ISP who had a message playing blaming BT.

My GF lives 1.5 miles away in the next village, had Sky broadband installed last week and was online woth no issues, we share the same exchange, so now I am confused.?

Was it BT's fault or Plusnet's fault, or just plusnet's section of BT Wholesale if that makes any sence.

http://portal.plus.net/supportpages.html?a=2&support_action=messages&ispservice_id=adsldial

Looking forward to TB's reply    (Hates Plusnet with a passion - But will know the real reason behind it all )

[TheBoy]

Plusnet have a place in life, if you want cheap browsing. Forget it if you want to stream or use (non Plusnet) VoIP at peak times. And for the love of God, don't use any of their services - email, websites etc.

But back on topic...

Sky for your exchange may be LLU (via Easynet), so if a DSLAM fail for example, that would knock out all BT Wholesale ISPs on that exchange (assuming only 1 DSLAM, medium/large exchanges will have multiple DSLAMs). If it was Plusnet specific, it could have been a Central fault, and seeing as Plusnet are knobs when it comes to having enough Central capacity, loosing 1 will result in outages, as their other Centrals will only be able to take a small part of the failed one's capacity - not the first time Plusnet have seen this. Additionally, being a wholly owned BT company, its not unreasonable to think that they may use BT as a transit provider, and maybe a major cable was damaged, though I suspect that would have hit the media - besides, not being able to authenticate implies a RADIUS issue, and if BT Wholesale's RADIUS had failed, the world would know, leaving Plusnet's own RADIUS (but then that would not be a BT Wholesale issue)


Or Plusnet talking bollax again - by blaming Wholesale, they can avert blame for their own incompitence...



For info, both my lines were up last night, one is Zen Internet, the other is BT Business broadband (ie, non Centralplus), but I'm down south

[Debs.]

but I'm down south

 .....I`m so sorry!

[TheBoy]

Ah, read the link you've added now.

Could be a break in BT's network used to get traffic from local exchange to the ISP's chosen PoP off BT's network, or it could be the Centrals.

Questions arise:
If they claim multiple ISPs, then that would imply the media would be all over this. And nothing seems to be trickling through yet. Also, BT's network has the capacity to reroute via alternative routes. Lastly, my HG for my BT line is Reading, so I would have perhaps expected that to glitch, though I may have been one of the lucky ones.

If its a Central, then it can only affect Plusnet. Why do they lack the Central capacity to cope with an outage (answer: cheapskates)

[BigAl]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/bt_outage_hits_isps/ details the issue

[freecall666]

I know round here they are fixing the lines for the fiber lines to be fitted with in the next 2years, seen about 30 bt vans at box's in my area.

[TheBoy]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/bt_outage_hits_isps/ details the issue

Ah, right, that was one of the sites I checked (as I'm not at work ), in in typical TheRegister style, nought when something happens.

I'm not on 21CN yet, thus wouldn't have been affected anyway.

Odd how it just really seems to be Plusnet affected. I still have my suspicions in my original post given the symptoms, although with PlusNet having their gateways in TH IIRC, the geography is all wrong for it to be Centrals.

[Mr Skrunts]

Cheers for the replies, all seems to stable now and web page loading speeds have increased, which has been a bit of a bug bear recently, then a couple of minor power cuts this morning have meant yet another modem reset, hopefully all settled now.

In all fairness to Plusnet I have no major complaints, I have been with them from day when they started as force9 and/or another name, but have accounts with all of them.  I am not on the run of the mill 50:1 contention ratio like like the normall users but on a 20:1 premium service, costs more but on the whole has been stable and reliable.  My contract was I could download what, I wanted, when I wanted as often as I wanted with no bandwidth restrictions.  That was on 512k, then 1mb, Think a slight restriction came in at 2mb, am on upto 8mb at mo but restricted to 15GB a month between 4pm and midnight.  Midnight to 4pm I can max the newsgroups if I choose.

I am not a commercial user, but am heavy on downloads at times, all the messenger progs and sometimes a heavy skype user with the headset, and in all honesty, thats clearer than my BT DECT phone most of the time.

If anyone can provide ISP details that give me all that for less than a tenner a month I will consider a change, till then, 2 nights with out the net in 18 months and one was a power cut aint too bad.

[TheBoy]

If anyone can provide ISP details that give me all that for less than a tenner a month I will consider a change, till then, 2 nights with out the net in 18 months and one was a power cut aint too bad.

Thats the thing, cheap and cheerful.  To make the figures work, they have to push capacity to maximum and redundancy to minimum

Mind you, something still doesn't ring true here...  ...if you are on a (permenent) 'under a tenner' a month for their 20:1 ratio, you must be on their LLU platform.  So how can they claim a BT fibre fault in Slough can affect you .  I'm not surprised with that mob

[Mr Skrunts]

If anyone can provide ISP details that give me all that for less than a tenner a month I will consider a change, till then, 2 nights with out the net in 18 months and one was a power cut aint too bad.

Thats the thing, cheap and cheerful.  To make the figures work, they have to push capacity to maximum and redundancy to minimum

Mind you, something still doesn't ring true here...  ...if you are on a (permenent) 'under a tenner' a month for their 20:1 ratio, you must be on their LLU platform.  So how can they claim a BT fibre fault in Slough can affect you .  I'm not surprised with that mob

Didnt actually say that, I said

If anyone can provide ISP details that give me all that for less than a tenner a month I will consider a change

I currently pay just over double for thier premier service, and they hate the fact I wont move off it.

[Taxi_Driver]

If anyone can provide ISP details that give me all that for less than a tenner a month I will consider a change, till then, 2 nights with out the net in 18 months and one was a power cut aint too bad.

Thats the thing, cheap and cheerful.  To make the figures work, they have to push capacity to maximum and redundancy to minimum

Mind you, something still doesn't ring true here...  ...if you are on a (permenent) 'under a tenner' a month for their 20:1 ratio, you must be on their LLU platform.  So how can they claim a BT fibre fault in Slough can affect you .  I'm not surprised with that mob

Im with plusnet too, didnt notice any outage the other day.....and havent had a problem since i joined up at the end of last year....I'm on the max 10G/month.....usually towards the end of the month, i try to use up my allowance 
Didnt have any prob watching iplayer on the tv the other night for 2 hours....so dont seem to have any streaming problems