Hmmmmmmm very strange!

[#1]

Just rang tech support and spoke to someone about a minor fault that just occurred about 7 minutes ago where the Internet light on my router turned red for no reason and stayed that way for about 2-3 minutes but in that time I went into my router settings and tried to manually connect and it said 'Chaps Authentication Failed' and doing a google search now the internets back (for now at least!) I found this information about Chaps authentication CHAP continues to 'CHallenge' your authentication details, so you're constantly being re-authenticated. If any of these fails, it'll most-likely deny you access to the network. but I don't understand how it could have failed as none of the settings in my router have been changed nor had I even been into my router settings to check anything until the disconnection.
Anyway tech support said they can see the connection dropped but couldn't tell me anything other than it might have been a brief problem at the exchange, and in my experience with Chap authentication it simply means the authentication server "farted" while I was logging in (except I wasn't logging in......) and that it's nothing serious and it usually rights itself within a few seconds (depending on the seriousness of the fart) lol, but in my case the fart lasted 3 minutes or so!
Any ideas anyone, or did this happen to anyone else @ roughly 2:15am!
It's also just happened again @ 2:33am on gateway something ag4......... Which I checked I was connected to before this second error occured.
It now says I'm connected to the "Telehouse East, Juniper 3" gateway. This gateway is sometimes known as pte-ag1.
Any problems or outages to report in the early hours Plusnet?

[#2]

I've just woke up to find that my PPP session did a similar thing around the same time even though my router's been synchronised continuously with the exchange since Friday. I'll look into it when I get to the office and report back here with any findings...
Edit: right I think it's fair to say that something happened as we lost user sessions across all of our central pipes. I would guess at a BT Wholesale outage although I've not received any notices about it and the only planned maintenance notices I have are for the 21CN network (I'm still on 20CN).

We've asked BT whether or not they can shed any more light on the situation...

[#3]

if it's any help, i often get 'drop-outs' at around changeover time, when the peak and non-peak times occur.  often i cannot connect for about two to ten minutes morning and evening and then it rights itself.  i don't get any chaps authorisation messages.  i just curse a bit and try again in a few minutes.  i'm on the legacy premium middle package.

[#4]

That shouldn't happen artificer
See my edited post before yours which explains why I think there was this drop shortly after 2.00am this morning.

[#5]

Me too, but mine was at 19:15 to 20:00 last night. Lost PPP but was still in sync with exchange. Came back up when I was waiting for CS to answer the phone.

Did not have PN support number at hand, luckily there is an open WiFi so tried to find the geographical  number on the portal but it seem that it's no longer in use. Is this the case? If so I may be looking for another ISP as on principle I will not use 0845 numbers.

[#6]

Cheers Bob,
Not sure why their was an brief outage as I checked the service status and planned maintenance etc as well and couldn't find any info either on the website.
@ itsme
Even if you come across an 0845 number you can enter it here http://www.saynoto0870.com and it will give you alternative numbers to ring instead of the 0845 number, also the sheffield number for support is still in use as that's what I rang last night twice and got an answer within minutes, presumably that's the number your on about when you say 'geographical number' ?

[#7]

Got the phone number from a P_P post on another thread.

Quote

we have two call centre, the original English one in Sheffield that can be reached on 0144 296 5188, if you dial the 0845 number you might get that or you might get the call centre that PN inherited from the John Lewis Partnership in Durban South Africa, that is supposed to be an overflow location

That number did not work. Last night I was using my PDA so not the best to surf the net so this morning I did another search of the portal and only found a geographical number for business accounts. I also had a look on saynoto0870 before posting the above and found several alternatives, including 5188, so it would be helpful if I know which numbers are in use and whether they are going to remain in use.

[#8]

Our internets were down from the early hours too - although everything looked OK on the router, I had to restart it this morning to restore connectivity.
Cheers

[#9]

Quote from: itsme

Got the phone number from a P_P post on another thread. Quote we have two call centre, the original English one in Sheffield that can be reached on 0144 296 5188, if you dial the 0845 number you might get that or you might get the call centre that PN inherited from the John Lewis Partnership in Durban South Africa, that is supposed to be an overflow location That number did not work.

To be honest I think it's going a bit overboard saying you'd change isp's just because a number didn't work for you OR that you didn't want to call an 0845 number, but that's just my opinion.
Anyway the reason the number you called didn't work is because it had been typed wrong by someone! The area code isn't 01442 it's 01142 (someone's obviously accidentally pressed 4 one too many times and left out the other 1!) anyway I used this number last night to call Plusnet and it worked fine 01142 965197
On a side note who do you have your phone line with? As B.T on their unlimited plan DON'T charge for any calls made to 0870 or 0845 numbers! It's included in the plan!

[#10]

Quote from: Bob

We've asked BT whether or not they can shed any more light on the situation...

Right, turns out that the drop was caused by our Wholesalers carrying out planned engineering works:

Quote from: BTw

The only possible cause that I can see would be a planned works to migrate all l2tp downstream traffic from the Colossus access PoP’s at Sheffield onto some new logical PoP aggregators also at Sheffield. This work was carried out at 02:00 and would of affected users in the Yorkshire area, PEW reference was PW126516.

I've had a look through my mailbox for prior notification of this work but cannot find it. Nonetheless, at least we now know what caused it.