DNS down - set your DNS servers manually

[#1]

Metro  :  Plusnet internet provider goes down leaving tens of thousands offline

The Sun  :  Is Plusnet down? Thousands of users report internet issues with broadband provider

Independent  :  Plusnet down: Internet not working as provider suffers technical issues

techradar  :  Plusnet broadband has gone down – here's what we know about the outage

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[#2]

Thanks everyone who replied. I'll thumbs up who you are. Noted and written down for future reference

@susanpenfold
@Mav

[#3]

Just rebooted and it appears to be back to normal

[#4]

Don't other utility providers already have a duty to provide service level information (not sure about real-time information)?

Time for Ofcom to put their foot down...

[#5]

Yeah I went for a calming down shower and when I come back down stairs all appears to be working again. So how long did it take to fix? 2 hours? 😡

[#6]

Thanks I tried that and it seemed to work for a while.

I have been having this problem for months, I am wondering if it is a DNS issue.

[#7]

+1 for a Network Status page. Really would have helped here. I spent longer looking for one than diagnosing the actual problem. 😕

[#8]

I was going to ask if digital voice was affected too - but of course PN dont offer. At least with CPI lower there'll be no 14% rises this year.

[#9]

There is no excuse for not having a status page where these issues can be announced. It would save a lot of people a lot of time.

[#10]

Can someone from Plusnet please help?

I understand that Plusnet and (perhaps) BT had a major system failure, starting at around 16:28 GMT (according to my router log).  I understand that this stuff happens, be nice if it didn't when we all become reliant on internet connectivity to save our lives in a year or so, but hey ho, this is just how things are going.

What I want to know is why Vodafone and O2 mobile connectivity also failed at exactly the same time, please.  When our broadband went down we walked up the hill behind us to check on our phones.  Neither could get a signal.  Whatever too out Plusnet was clearly more widespread, as it also took out the mobile network here.

It could be a coincidence that Vodafone and O2 both failed at the exact same time as Plusnet and some BT services failed, but that seems a heck of a coincidence.  Does anyone please have any explanation as to why mobile services went down at the exact same time?

I will express an interest by adding that I am very concerned at the loss of the landline soon.  We are wholly reliant on a landline phone to call the emergency services, as it takes us ten minutes to hike up the hill to get a mobile signal.  If the mobile signal fails when the internet fails then that leaves us with no way to call for help, which is a bit worrying.

[#11]

The  lesson to be learnt here is to NOT have your router DNS settings both pointing to the same provider !

If you insist on continuing the use of Plusnet DNS, then perhaps set your primary DNS to 212.159.13.52

but at least set your secondary DNS to an alternative supplier, such as - Google, Cloudflare, Quad9, OpenDNS, etc...

If one DNS goes down, then your router will continue working using the alternate DNS provider !

Personally my home router currently has NINE different configured DNS upstream sources, with a mixture of IPv4 and IPv6 DNS addresses, with the router sending lookup requests simultaneously to all of them, then choosing to use the quickest valid reply to respond back to my devices.

[#12]

@Mav

Ah entirely different connections! In which case you e got the added complications of which DNS (standard or parental controls) and static or dynamic IP address. They each can deliver different DNS addresses and might have different routing to them.

The SYMPTOMS here were DNS look up failures - one should be careful about presuming that the DNS service (unqualified) was down rather than a routing component to that (those) services was down.

The good news is it is fixed and was fixed fairly promptly.

[#13]

Plusnet are very wrong to removed service status on their site. Glad I am not with PN anymore.

[#14]

I was actually surprised that as soon as I went with cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1) the overall web browsing performance improved ten fold from the native PN DNS service which is somewhat odd.

[#15]

You can test for yourself which DNS are the fastest on your connection using  https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm