Sky broadband goes TITSUP ALL DAY, thwarts Brits' Xmas web shopping BSkyB's broadband internet and phone service Sky Talk have been down for at least a day in London – and may not be fixed any time soon. Brits say they have been unable to get online following a cock-up affecting an exchange in Blighty's capital. According to the entertainment giant's network status page: Broadband outage In …
"Up for me, and my router has been up all day too. Maybe just a handful of exchanges?" Hmmmm, we're outside the M25 and I noticed it was very slow from about 10am until about 2pm. Quite strange performance as well - each time I loaded a new web page or downloaded a file, the download speed would start at 0.1Kbps and clock up in 0.1 increments every second until it got to about 160Kbps, then no higher. A bit after 2pm it went back to normal.
"Murdoch owns easynet that's why sky broadband got better a few years back at the same time as easynet got worse."
He bought them in 2005, and then more recently (in 2010) he sold them again, for about half what he paid. [1]
No idea what role Easynet currently play in the Murdoch empire.
Meanwhile didn't Sky customers in North Wales fall off the Internet last week? Can't remember where I saw it, but the implication was that the wet weather caused damage to backbone connectivity. BT had resilient routing so no disruption, Sky had single point of failure. Reminders (or correction) welcome.
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/21/easynet_sky/
Well, if their broadband infrastructure is being managed by their pro-cycling team during the cold months where no road racing takes place, who would be surprised at this?
However I would expect that a lot of power cycling is currently taking place on servers and routers in their datacentre so maybe this isn't as outlandish an idea as I first thought.
a case of a JCB driver digging the wrong hole
Or in the case of the Portsmouth/south coast outage a few months ago, a 16 yr old untrained JCB driver was told to back fill a trench and he pushed the wrong lever and dropped the bucket through VM's main feed....
Beer .. because that what you need while waiting 2 days for your tv/internets to come back
When I finally got through to support I was told it was 80k customers. A lot of exchanges affected are not on the list Sky have provided.
Went down for me at 11pm on the 10th, still down. Sky telephone support are saying it's an area fault and won't give any estimate as to when it will be fixed. In fact they won't give any information at all about it. Very bad form.
Anyone else noticed that the accents on support are getting stronger to the point of finding it hard to understand them?
"the accents on support are getting stronger to the point of finding it hard to understand them?"
Is it accents, or is it just crap overcompressed badly-implemented VoIP (which, if your landline is down, will be worse still because of the additional cellphone degradation)?
"Sky have been pretty slow on updates - 37k people affected! I want the Sky news 'copter tailing the engineers, and reporters giving live updates from the scene."
You want to realise you pay a few quid a month for your broadband! 'copter indeed! Doh!
I am incredulous of the fact that Sky network can go down to a single geographic point of failure.
I mean, if it were a single exchange site or content provider site then I'd expect some disruption. But a single point of fibre/cable failing? At the metro/access layer surely they still have east/west resilience?
"I am incredulous of the fact that Sky network can go down to a single geographic point of failure.
I mean, if it were a single exchange site or content provider site then I'd expect some disruption. But a single point of fibre/cable failing? At the metro/access layer surely they still have east/west resilience?"
I am totally unsurprised that you have no idea how the network operates! Well done at highlighting that.
I am totally unsurprised that you have no idea how the network operates! Well done at highlighting that.
Yet how many times are we told that the internet is resilient and immune to such single point failures? And wasn't that the prime motivation for its development?
Few would expect redundancy from home/office to cabinet but it seems the infrastructure is far more tree-like than net-like with a single point of failure knocking out numerous downstream branches.
The infrastructure is frequently demonstrated to be much more fragile than it should be. The redundant and alternative paths to keep things going when one site falls over seem to be placed too high up the network and I suspect less redundancy exists than could exist. I would venture that's a cost decision. Things could be made better but the network operators either don't care or don't want to invest in that.
People may be ignorant of how the network operates but they are frequently led to believe it operates other than it does in practice.
I am in Southend-on-Sea and my line speed dropped from ±14.5 Mbps to <8.4 Mbps two days back and is still at that speed, and ping went from around 21ms to 37ms. Wondering if this exchange problem can be affecting BT customers as well? However digging through BT's jumbled website shows everything working normally here even if their own line speed test constantly fails.
Any other BT customers experiencing the same degradation in service?
I'm with Zen (running through BT) and my broadband has been all over the shop for weeks now. It's like every request is being read before it's sent on and any protocol that's not http is dying on its ass. I'm in Lewisham. Do you think Dave went to China to thank them for installing the Great Firewall o' Blighty?
Yesterday my internet connection was slow so I rang my ISP, Scotnet.
It went like this:
Scotnet: "Press 1 for sales or 2 for technical help"
Me: Presses 2, the phone rings twice.
Scotnet: "Hello my name is D, how can I help"
Me: "My internet is slow."
Scotnet: "We've had a problem with a BT fibre but fixed it 15 mins ago. Reboot your router and you'll be good to go."
Me: "Thanks,"
The total time on the phone was about one minute, after reboot the connection was back to normal.
That is what I call good service.
Sooooo, you did not think to reboot your router before calling? Or were you on the phone so long it was fixed in the meantime?
Good customer service that is not, there was nothing wrong. All they had to report was that BT fixed something and inform you you had not tried restarting your router (assuming you had not as it seems from your words).
Try calling when BT have not fixed it yet and see how it goes then, not saying it will not be good service but that this is not an indication of good service when the shit has hit the fan.
Just about when I got unwillingly switched to Sky afaik.
Shows ok on speed tests but the minute you put any files of any decent size to upload it dies on its arse.
Rang the hell desk yesterday but got caught out telling porkies to hurry them through their fault finding list ;)
"Do you have only 1 pc connected on a wired cable"
"Me...yes yes" Looking at my ipad and wireless printer. (I had tested earlier with wifi on the router disabled)
"Him - just logging onto your router"
"Errr sir....."
Me<click>
"....."Him - just logging onto your router"......" LOL, I would have just rode it out and claimed the iPad and printer were off earlier when you were investigating the error, then demand to know if they are saying their service is so poor it can't handle three devices.
Funniest overheard helldesk call ever? One of my mates several years ago use to do the switch installs for NTL on contract. Every site he went to he would setup the switches with the agreed admin logins which the NTL staff were supposed to remotely change later - apparently they never did. All these switch sites had a standbye landline with a modem for remote access if the main cable got sliced. One evening we were round a friend's and the NTL line was up and down like a yo-yo but the NTL support were insisting there was "no problem with the line, we can see your router". Cue my mate getting out his work laptop and GPRS card and being able to say to the support bod "Just logging into your switch...." It turned out someone had made some configuration edits and ballsed the switch configuration. The admin login had been left the same as it had been when my mate installed it a year earlier.
Hi @SkyHelpTeam any update on when this will be fixed? I've got a secret Santa prezzie to online shop for!
Does this person that you have highlighted in the article realise that they are actually on the Internet and can buy this "prezzie" *sigh* on the connection they are currently using to post the tweet?
Or that if buying secret Santa is such a pressing issue, there are these things called shops. You go in, select what you want and usually after giving someone some money can take it away.* Maybe some time away from the computer will do them good.
* i say usually because it is also possible to spend 30+ minutes telling staff you'd like to buy a specific item, being told 'sorry, not my department' and then leaving without managing to get any staff member take money off you. Go DSG.
Prime example of the type of idiots that Twitter brings out of the wood work.
The person complaining that they can't shop online by posting something on Twitter, I presume they are using the new telepathic tweeting facility rather than an internet device, you know, the sort of device that allows you to surf the web, which co-incidentally also has a few eCommerce sites on it.
"And why would a BT customer ring Sky's hell desk exactly?"
A BT customer might not ring on their own behalf, but is it conceivable that a Sky customer - whose service is bust and where there's no mobile coverage - may be reduced to scrounging the use of a neighbour's phone that's on a telco that works?
SKY Broadband working as normal here & has done for the last 3 years! Not suffered any problems, but now doomed myself tomorrow when I switch over to SKY's Fibre network!!!
With some of the comments on this thread, I wonder if half of the people actually know anything about IT or the things they comment on? Satellite Broadband? AFAIK SKY don't offer satellite broadband connections & that is left to companies such as TwoWay in rural areas.
"I wonder if half of the people actually know anything about IT or the things they comment on? Satellite Broadband? AFAIK SKY don't offer satellite broadband connections & that is left to >>companies such as TwoWay<< in rural areas."
The name is Tooway not twoway.
Some ill-informed people think because some satellite broadband comes from some of the same satellites that Sky have used, that that makes it "Sky satellite broadband".
That wouldn't be right though.
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