PlusNet - Upgrade - 4 days downtime...

A customer of mine has just lost their PlusNet ADSL service and has been
told it'll be offline for 4 days due to an "M" upgrade - whatever that is.
(I suspect it's been mis-heard and I'm hearing this 2nd hand too, so...)

They had no notification of it, just had the plug pulled earlier today
and when calling told it would be down for 4 days.

I've nothing to do with their broadband, (I do some hosting and VoIP
for them - or rather lack of VoIP which is why they're pissed off) ,
but it does seem a bit weird to me ...

Anyone have any clues what this is?

Gordon

In article <(E-Mail Removed) >,
Peter Crosland <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>> A customer of mine has just lost their PlusNet ADSL service and has been
>>> told it'll be offline for 4 days due to an "M" upgrade - whatever that
>>> is.
>>> (I suspect it's been mis-heard and I'm hearing this 2nd hand too, so...)
>>> They had no notification of it, just had the plug pulled earlier today
>>> and when calling told it would be down for 4 days.
>>
>> There are some big problems with part of PlusNet's core network at the
>> minute
>> http://www.plus.net/supportpages.html?a=2
>>
>> also see http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/mso.php and
>> http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/llu.php
>> to check your customer's line.
>
>
>The problem affects far more than just Plusnet, and is due to a third party
>severing a major set of BT cabling in the Ilford area.

I did wonder about that - but the cable cut happened on Saturday and my
client lost access at lunchtime today and were told they'd be offline
for 4 days.

Ho hum.

Gordon

Gordon Henderson wrote:

> A customer of mine has just lost their PlusNet ADSL service and has been
> told it'll be offline for 4 days due to an "M" upgrade - whatever that is.
> (I suspect it's been mis-heard and I'm hearing this 2nd hand too, so...)

Is he being moved to Annex M ADSL2+? Or maybe the Plusnet droid said "It's
due an, erm, upgrade"?

--
<http://ale.cx/> (AIM:troffasky) ((E-Mail Removed))
21:00:49 up 123 days, 22:11, 3 users, load average: 0.16, 0.12, 0.09
Sexy ladies, and nasty boys, all freaky freakin', to the robot noise

In article <(E-Mail Removed) >,
Peter Crosland <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>>> The problem affects far more than just Plusnet, and is due to a third
>>>> party severing a major set of BT cabling in the Ilford area.
>>> I did wonder about that - but the cable cut happened on Saturday and my
>>> client lost access at lunchtime today and were told they'd be offline
>>> for 4 days.
>>
>> If you read through all the blurb PlusNet are cutting off some residential
>> customers to manage their bandwidth requirements.
>>
>> Not clear how or why they're selecting which ones to chop
>
>If you read the whole item you will see that this is a load balancing
>exercise and those cut off should be able to reconnect within a short
>period. Nothing very unusual about this at all. Unlike most ISPs Plusnet
>actually tell you what they are doing! What amazes me is that BT have so
>little redundancy built into their network.

This is a business customer which according to what I read about the
30-minute cut-offs shouldn't be cut-off. But 4 days )-:

Gordon

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, alexd <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>Gordon Henderson wrote:
>
>> A customer of mine has just lost their PlusNet ADSL service and has been
>> told it'll be offline for 4 days due to an "M" upgrade - whatever that is.
>> (I suspect it's been mis-heard and I'm hearing this 2nd hand too, so...)
>
>Is he being moved to Annex M ADSL2+? Or maybe the Plusnet droid said "It's
>due an, erm, upgrade"?

That's a possibility. Might make sense, but a 4 day downtime with
zero notice?

Gordon

"Pete Zahut" <dont@bother> considered Wed, 8 Apr 2009 13:33:13 +0100
the perfect time to write:

>Peter Crosland wrote:
>>>> A customer of mine has just lost their PlusNet ADSL service and has
>>>> been told it'll be offline for 4 days due to an "M" upgrade -
>>>> whatever that is.
>>>> (I suspect it's been mis-heard and I'm hearing this 2nd hand too,
>>>> so...) They had no notification of it, just had the plug pulled
>>>> earlier today and when calling told it would be down for 4 days.
>>>
>>> There are some big problems with part of PlusNet's core network at
>>> the minute
>>> http://www.plus.net/supportpages.html?a=2
>>>
>>> also see http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/mso.php and
>>> http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/llu.php
>>> to check your customer's line.
>>
>>
>> The problem affects far more than just Plusnet, and is due to a third
>> party severing a major set of BT cabling in the Ilford area.
>>
>> Peter Crosland
>
>Found this from "Woody" in uk.telecom:
>
>The boring machine hit a BT deep level tunnel 32m below the surface and
>severed 62 cables. This included telephone pairs, co-axial cables and
>bundles of fibre. Old Street exchange cut off, 70000PSTN lines out and
>about 20000 each of broadband and data lines (kilostream and
>megastream.) As of lunchtime today most of the PSTN lines had been
>restored but BT can give no time to fix on the other circuits.
>
>In fibre networking it is normal to 'wire' it in a ring so if the
>preferred route between any two points should fail the circuits can
>re-route the other way round. At this location BT are bringing in mobile
>STM-1 muxes to run fibre at or just below ground level. This suggests
>that possibly both 'sides' of the ring were in the same tunnel - exactly
>the same as happened in the tunnel fire in Manchester (Google 'Guardian
>Exchange fire' for more info) a few years ago. Don't they ever learn???
>
Years back I had to put a lan link between to buildings in London
(about a year after COLT started up).
I didn't use BT because they refused to even quote for a link with a
guarantee of diverse routing for the fibres.
2 months after COLT installed the link, BT managed to cut one of the
paths while installing more capacity into a building nearby, and it
was only the diverse routing that saved us from 2 days of downtime.
The only effect on us was that the link turned yellow on the snmp
management console.

Pete Zahut wrote:

> Peter Crosland wrote:
> >>> A customer of mine has just lost their PlusNet ADSL service and has
> >>> been told it'll be offline for 4 days due to an "M" upgrade -
> >>> whatever that is.
> >>> (I suspect it's been mis-heard and I'm hearing this 2nd hand too,
> >>> so...) They had no notification of it, just had the plug pulled
> >>> earlier today and when calling told it would be down for 4 days.
> >>
> >> There are some big problems with part of PlusNet's core network at
> >> the minute
> >> http://www.plus.net/supportpages.html?a=2
> >>
> >> also see http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/mso.php and
> >> http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/llu.php
> >> to check your customer's line.
> >
> >
> > The problem affects far more than just Plusnet, and is due to a third
> > party severing a major set of BT cabling in the Ilford area.
> >
> > Peter Crosland
>
> Found this from "Woody" in uk.telecom:
>
> The boring machine hit a BT deep level tunnel 32m below the surface and
> severed 62 cables. This included telephone pairs, co-axial cables and
> bundles of fibre. Old Street exchange cut off, 70000PSTN lines out and
> about 20000 each of broadband and data lines (kilostream and
> megastream.) As of lunchtime today most of the PSTN lines had been
> restored but BT can give no time to fix on the other circuits.
>
> In fibre networking it is normal to 'wire' it in a ring so if the
> preferred route between any two points should fail the circuits can
> re-route the other way round. At this location BT are bringing in mobile
> STM-1 muxes to run fibre at or just below ground level. This suggests
> that possibly both 'sides' of the ring were in the same tunnel - exactly
> the same as happened in the tunnel fire in Manchester (Google 'Guardian
> Exchange fire' for more info) a few years ago. Don't they ever learn???
>
> Pete

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/m...er/3577799.stm