topic Re: Outage? in Full Fibre

Outage?

Raxiel — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 18:28:23 GMT

All day today, the hub has been alternating between blue and orange.

Did the diagnostic on the web interface and it told me to call CS which I did. They told me I'm part of a "major outage" that started yesterday morning about 10am and was expected to be resolved by 6pm tonight.

Given there was nothing much else to be done about it I thanked the rep and turned on my hotspot to see out the day.

Thing is, it's gone six and its still happening. Is there a service status page anywhere that covers the problem and when its expected to be resolved? I can't find any mention of it anywhere.

Also, the rep told me to factory reset the router at six as well. I've not reset it but I did restart it. Do I actually need to do a factory reset? I'll do it if I have to, but I don't want to go to the trouble of reconfiguring it (I have some IP configuration stuff on the LAN side) if its not actually going to help.

When it does work, it works fine, the blue light just doesn't last.

Re: Outage?

jab1 — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 18:37:08 GMT

You have posted on the Full Fibre board - are you FTTP or FTTC? And where are you/which exchange?

Re: Outage?

Raxiel — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 18:38:47 GMT

It's FTTP, Chesterfield exchange.

Re: Outage?

jab1 — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 18:40:07 GMT

OK - where? I may be able to check, no guarantees, as I don't know if my source picks up FTTP faults yet.

Re: Outage?

jab1 — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 18:46:22 GMT

There are a number Full Fibre fault reports on my source, but unfortunately the identifiers don't mean much - roughly when did it start, do you know?

Re: Outage?

Raxiel — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 18:47:50 GMT

Actually, you got me thinking, and after checking Nextdoor, turns out a few people in the town are having issues on other ISPs, so it probably is the exchange end.

CS said it started yesterday morning around 10, matches nextdoor, but I did have problems until today.

Re: Outage?

jab1 — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 18:53:29 GMT

OK - give me a chance, and I'll see if I can narrow it down. May take a while, but I'll see what I can find.

Re: Outage?

Dan_the_Van — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 18:56:09 GMT

@Raxiel

See https://istheservicedown.co.uk/status/bt-british-telecom/2653225-chesterfield-derbyshire-england-united-kingdom

https://istheservicedown.co.uk/status/virgin-media/2653225-chesterfield-derbyshire-england-united-kingdom

https://istheservicedown.co.uk/status/talktalk/2653225-chesterfield-derbyshire-england-united-kingdom

HTH

Re: Outage?

jab1 — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 19:01:52 GMT

Thanks, @Dan_the_Van . Strangely enough, there are no reports in the Chesterfield area of FF issues on the official OR reporting tool - or at least the one I use, which is on Zen, and I have been told that is a 'copy' of the OR information.

Re: Outage?

Dan_the_Van — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 19:07:54 GMT

@jab1

I did look at the Zen site, unusually not much help.

I did a search on "broadband outage in Chesterfield" and those were some of the results.

Dan

Re: Outage?

M3SNU-Steve — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 19:10:57 GMT

Same thing happening to me in Chesterfield, been dropping connections all day.

Re: Outage?

jab1 — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 19:11:47 GMT

i find it strange that our source doesn't list the problem, @Dan_the_Van - there are only three FF reports in the last couple of days on there and the nearest I can find to Chesterfield is Basford (Nottingham area, IIRC?)

Re: Outage?

Raxiel — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 19:45:11 GMT

Curiously, Virgin don't have their own network here, they're just using the open reach infrastructure like the others. Wonder if they're genuinely not affected or just no reports from their customers

Re: Outage?

jab1 — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 19:57:43 GMT

I didn't know Virgin used the OR network anywhere - in fact I find it a bit strange, as their technology is somewhat different, but if you say so...

EDIT; to add - having done some checking VM do not use OpenReach infrastructure.

Re: Outage?

Raxiel — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 20:18:01 GMT

Well, they're at least using their poles. They only became available here when FTTP became available on the other providers.

Re: Outage?

jab1 — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 20:18:49 GMT

Further edit to the above, with apologies. It appears that they can use OR ducts and poles, under PIA, but only for laying their own Full Fibre infrastructure - they still supply it via their own network.

Re: Outage?

jab1 — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 20:19:53 GMT

See my further amendment above.

Re: Outage?

Raxiel — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 21:14:14 GMT

Fair enough, someone had told me they were using the last mile like the other providers, but I guess that's overstating it.

Either way, whatever was wrong appears to have subsided, the router has remained connected for a couple of hours, and the speed/latency is back to normal too.

Re: Outage?

jab1 — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 06:20:13 GMT

someone had told me they were using the last mile like the other providers,

Nope, they are only using the ducts/poles to carry their cables. Don't believe everything you are told. 😀

Re: Outage?

Raxiel — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 15:26:20 GMT

Well, I'm offline again.
It dropped out shortly before 4pm on Monday. After a couple of hours I called Plusnet and they confirmed it was another incident at the chesterfield exchange (although interestingly their system said it started after 5pm). It was projected to be fixed by 6pm Tuesday. So I went into the office yesterday. Chatting to the local IT, his virgin fibre (from the pole) actually was off last week as well, so they were affected after all. Either there's some other common component or it's quite a coincidence.
I got a call around 3pm from the same Plusnet rep who told me it was showing as cleared and asked if I was back on? Great service, but as I wasn't in I couldn't be sure. Mrs confirmed It was back on when she arrived so all was well.

Then today, it went off about half twelve. Didn't wait this time and called in right away. This time the rep said there's no incident logged at the exchange and had me go through the process of checking connections and factory reset the router, none of which worked.
I forget the exact term he used but he said there was an authentication issue and he needs to send an engineer (nearest appointment over a week away). Obviously I wasn't happy with that so he said he'd investigate if they could try sending a new router or find a nearer appointment. Still waiting for the call back about that.

Thing is, while I can believe the router coincidentally failed after all these arrangements faults, having spoken to several neighbours, both BT and EE customers are both offline right now, and BT told their customer there is a fault.

Given Monday's issue was apparently only logged over an hour after my connection dropped I wonder if I just beat them to it this time.

Not that any of this actually helps me, but I'm at a bit of a loose end.

Edit: And while this is probably reaching a bit far. It's also come to my attention that National Grid (the local DNO) are undertaking "Urgent Works" on the electricity network two streets over from the exchange. Works that had "no parking" signs posted last week. Virgin might not share network infrastructure, but I bet they share power.