Outage?

[#1]

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.

[#2]

See my further amendment above.

[#3]

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.

[#4]

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. 😀

[#5]

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.

[#6]

Same here my connection has been dropping out again from around 4pm.  I am on the Chesterfield exchange.  

Has anyone had any problems today? 

[#7]

This has been going on for at least a couple of weeks. Some of the ISP's involved are Plusnet, BT, Sky and Vodaphone.

I have a quality monitor running at ThinkBroadband and can't keep up with the IP changes.

Is there a point at which service providers should 'man up' and tell customers exactly what is going on?

The facebook group in Wingerworth has some 'My mate heard someone saying that an engineer said....' type posts in it but that sort of  hearsay information helps nobody. It would be nice to know exactly what the problem is without any speculation.

[#8]

Plusnet called back.
He checked again, and apparently there's still no incident logged that they can see on their system.

Apparently I'm not the only customer he'd dealt with today in this situation, but with no incident showing he has to work with what he's got.

So an engineer is booked for next Friday, but there's a new router on the way first.

I'm burning through a lot of mobile data in the meantime.

[#9]

Disconnections have started earlier than usual today, first one around 2pm whereas up to today, for me, they have been from around 4pm.

It would be good if someone from PlusNet were to find out exactly what's going on and enlighten us.

[#10]

Sorry to hear about this @longedge 

I've chased Openreach and the issue is being classed as an outage due to the nature of how many people are affected.

The current estimated fix time is by 5pm on the 21st but this may change

[#11]

Strange, @MatthewWheeler  - According to the OR fault database, there are no known issues on the Chesterfield exchange.

[#12]

@MatthewWheeler Thanks for the update. Have to wait and see what happens 🙂

[#13]

Speaking to some of my neighbours, some of them were offline over the weekend and got the same 5pm on Monday fix date which did seem to be accurate. Personally, mine was working fine all weekend. Aside from an hour or so on Friday evening it had been problem free since the last "outage" was fixed around 3pm on Thursday the 17th.
Last night (21st of October) it went off again at half eleven and was still off the next morning.

So whatever the problem was, it's still ongoing.

Feels like everyone in town is taking turns with a working connection.

Edit: I also discovered over the weekend that it's not just been affecting FttP. Neighbours with FttC have been suffering big outages too. Not sure about plain old DSL, I only know one person still on that and they've not had issues, but it's not much of a sample size.

[#14]

Still offline, over 37 hours straight this time.
Called it in to Plusnet last night, was told that according to OR the outage was resolved.
They confirmed they were getting the same PPP Authentication error I got last week, we did the whole factory reset, power off for a couple of minutes, didn't help. Went into the Admin page and made sure the username and password were correct, still not connecting. She went to raise a line fault with OR and said "Oh! I wasn't expecting that!" as it immediately went straight to "Book an engineer". I said that, yes, I could be at home today if that meant someone would be round to fix it (with my already over limit hotspot) and I was booked in 8am-1pm today.
A slot that just expired without any visit or even contact.
I've no doubt they're busy, and a fix wouldn't necessarily require physical presence, but I should have heard *something*

BT retail and EE customers are getting mini-hubs that connect to the EE network (presumably why my personal phone is so slow). Does Plusnet offer anything like this? It's getting ridiculous now.

[#15]

Going to continue discussion here https://community.plus.net/t5/Full-Fibre/Daily-p-m-disconnections-for-multiple-ISP-s/m-p/1988765/hig...