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Plusnet outage

HarryB
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
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Registered: ‎25-03-2015

Re: Plusnet outage

@patentspending Not entirely sure why they've said that as we have been advised by the people who were working on resolving the issue, that they believe the issue is resolved and there was no further customer impact which is what gave us the go ahead to update the service status advising the same.

 

Following this (at about 6pm) I have also received a further email from our incident management team advising that the issue has been resolved. However they are still monitoring for this to remain stable until tomorrow.

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 Harry Beesley
 Plusnet
artmo
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Re: Plusnet outage

I phoned PN at 1.15p to report my broadband was down. Got through to a CS agent very quickly. He tested my line and found nothing wrong but reset my connection as I had a fault on my landline yesterday. This seemed to correct my problem. We were on the phone for about 25 minutes but in that time the agent was not aware there was a problem across the network and thought it was just me.

HarryB
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
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Re: Plusnet outage

To be fair on that one, I'm pretty sure we only became aware of it around that time (between 1pm and 1:40pm) and we weren't aware of the extent of the outage immediately.
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 Harry Beesley
 Plusnet
MattyC
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
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Re: Plusnet outage

Heads up that we've just closed the service status.

ex-Plusnet staffer. Any posts after 28/07/2017 aren't on behalf of Plusnet
Trying
Dabbler
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Re: Plusnet outage

Could someone please explain why when ringing CS yesterday about the outage, I was advised that it was a BT problem and they were looking into it. 
To me, the suggestion here is that the DNS servers are either remote to the Plusnet ISP routing operations, or even worse, a shared facility with BT.
Given the number of internet users now using Plusnet, is it not practical to have a back-up DNS system in place, being as it is one function that can cause such a catastrophic isp outage.
I thought the government were of the opinion, that the internet was now one of the primary necessary services everyone needs, so surely a more robust system of providing the service should be a must.

lowerformoflife
Newbie
Posts: 3
Registered: ‎04-05-2016

Re: Plusnet outage

my internet was out yesterday and i dont use plusnet's DNS. It was likely something along the lines of one of the BT server clusters which our(plusnets) data is routed through went down or had a feedback loop of data breaking it.

Trying
Dabbler
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Re: Plusnet outage

It was definitely a DNS issue, as, as soon as I changed 2 of my computers to also use Googles DNS service, I immediately had internet availability again on the changed ones, whereas other PC's/laptops not changed continued to have no internet access problems until Plusnet fixed their DNS issue.

Andrue
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Re: Plusnet outage


@Trying wrote:

It was definitely a DNS issue


Nope..or at least that wasn't the root cause.

My TBBQM shows outages but it is configured using my IP address so no DNS is involved there. In any case a Plusnet DNS failure will not impact incoming traffic for most of us (*). I also couldn't access my mail server at times and although DNS is involved there the server(s) being queried do not belong to Plusnet nor reside on its network.

DNS failures will almost always(*) manifest as an inability to access external sites from your LAN. Even then depending on the domain you might not notice. All modern OSes cache DNS requests so with a reasonably long TTL (30 minutes or an hour or so) chances are you won't notice a brief outage.

My guess is a network fault that blocked access to their DNS servers as well as static IP routing.

(*)It could if Plusnet are hosting your domain but that's fairly rare.

HarryB
Plusnet Help Team
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Re: Plusnet outage


@Trying wrote:

or even worse, a shared facility with BT.

Bear in mind BT Wholesale are our wholesale provider. So if our advisor mentioned BT, they weren't necessarily referring to BT Retail/Consumer.

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 Harry Beesley
 Plusnet
Trying
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Re: Plusnet outage

I am well aware of Plusnet's ownership, and that you rely on BT wholesale, but to what extent you now rely on BT wholesale, seems to be another matter, and perhaps not previously realised.

Previously, I understood that BT wholesale, just provided the means to traffic my internet usage between the Plusnet Isp, and my home telephone vdsl point, although I realise of recent times, that some Plusnet consumers are now routed by a different means for their internet traffic.

Yet again, a misleading reply, unless BT wholesale, BT,  or another 3rd party supplier, now supply the Plusnet DNS service.

Perhaps if Plusnet were to be more forthcoming about the cause and reason of outages, and remedial actions to prevent such re-occurrence, their consumers wouldn't feel so kept in the dark, and would feel that their custom was more valued by Plusnet.
It seems long gone are he days, sadly,  of Plusnets openess, wiilingness to share information, and the CS values that first attracted me to be a Plusnet customer. Sad

bobpullen
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Re: Plusnet outage

DNS was not the cause, although the problem will have manifested itself as such for some due to an inability to route to some of our caching servers.

It was down to a core router in one of our London data centres and the trigger is still being looked into.

Incidentally, many of those who have been moved to our new broadband network will not have been affected. Apologies to those that were.

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
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patentspending
Hooked
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Re: Plusnet outage

Thanks for the response however I am still awaiting a resolution with an Sla for response of 72h. I can see a dns resolution on tracert and intermittent response on nslookup. As someone who previously recommended plusnet on basis of service I will refrain in future.
bobpullen
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Re: Plusnet outage

If you're still experiencing problems, they will be unrelated to the outage the other day.

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
If I've been helpful then please give thanks ⤵

patentspending
Hooked
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Registered: ‎04-05-2016

Re: Plusnet outage

I have to disagree. My problem started at the same time as many others and with the same symptoms. I spoke with plusnet support twice yesterday. At around 6pm I was told that my problem was the same and although there was a post saying the issue was resolved people were still reporting issues. At just before 10pm I was working with tech support to resolve with no success and a technical escalation with 72h Sla. Ok I got many apologies from the guy I was working with. This is a case of don't be sorry be better.
Trying
Dabbler
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Re: Plusnet outage

Thankyou Bob. Smiley

At long last a more meaningful explanation, instead of meaningless fluff, and even an apology Smiley
I hope we get a more informed explanation when you understand more fully what happened.

I know that the internet industry is far more complicated than the old days of dial up internet, but I do find it puzzling given my own experience during the outage, ie pages already resolved still auto updating, and the fact that use of Googles DNS service seemed to circumvent my 'at the time' unavailable internet problems.

Given the government seem to these days now consider internet availability an 'essential service', perhaps the industry needs to look into having alternative routing switching/path options/back-up provisions, not unlike the consumer electrical supply industry.
Does the internet provision industry use UK internet wide similar fault mode analysis, and defined check lists not unlike the aviation industry, given the amount of integration across the industry these days?