BT Infinity ‘working to fix problem’ after three days of outages

BT Infinity users have been suffering with outages and slow service for three days, as the network struggles with a DNS or routing issue. El Reg readers tipped us off that folks trying to connect with BT were getting problems such as failure to resolve DNS, slow web-page loading, interrupted web pages, and frankly rubbish …

[tentimes]

Could be GCHQ that is playing up. Also, it's in Northern Ireland too

Myself and next door neighbour have had intermittent access for 4 days now. Also, when you go to their service status and type your number in they say everything is fine.

I can't stream video and have regular interruptions to online games. What annoys me most is BT trying to minimize it and pretend your line is fine.

In the past BT's DNS has been notoriously uppy/downy and I had another router, but you can't get their TV service through another router so I am stuck.

It could also be a GCHQ problem as all BT modems stream your data through GCHQ (you can search for that one if you want - some guy proved it with some very low level work on the modem for those with a BT home hmub 3 and an openreach VDSL modem. The modem was connected to two IP addresses and streaming all requests to the second.)

[Alex Brett]

Re: Could be GCHQ that is playing up. Also, it's in Northern Ireland too

The claims that there were backdoors in the modem for DoD/NSA/GCHQ were thoroughly debunked - see http://www.revk.uk/2013/12/paraniod-ravings.html or http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/12/confusion-alleged-gchq-nsa-backdoor-bt-fttc-modems.html for details...

[tentimes]

Re: Could be GCHQ that is playing up. Also, it's in Northern Ireland too

Then why was it attached to TWO IP addresses and streaming all contents of the first to the second address. I have no doubts about it even after reading your "debunk".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Could be GCHQ that is playing up. Also, it's in Northern Ireland too

I have no doubts about it

That's because you haven't a clue how the internet works.

[Afernie]

Re: Could be GCHQ that is playing up. Also, it's in Northern Ireland too

"Then why was it attached to TWO IP addresses and streaming all contents of the first to the second address. I have no doubts about it even after reading your "debunk"."

At the GCHQ staff meeting:

The Big Cheese: "OK, people, we need for proposals for deep packet inspection collection and inspection capability across all UK FTTC networks. Smith, what's your take?"

Smith: "Mirror all the data to a collection appliance on the ISPs premises, for retrieval and analysis at our leisure. The kit's expensive and the storage requirements high, but it's centralised and practical."

Jones: "I think we should force BT to install a custom spy firmware in 6 million Customer Premises modems."

The Big Cheese: " ...." <Smacks the back of Jones' head, very hard>

[Alex Brett]

Re: Could be GCHQ that is playing up. Also, it's in Northern Ireland too

The only address the modem has is its management one, the primary connection it provides is via a PPP connection between the customer's router and the ISP's LNS where it is just passing packets.

I see no evidence found by anybody that any traffic was forwarded through the management address, and ultimately it would make absolutely no sense to do it that way when you could do it far easier at either the DSLAM or core network level entirely transparently to the end user and any equipment they might have!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Could be GCHQ that is playing up. Also, it's in Northern Ireland too

It could also be a GCHQ problem as all BT modems stream your data through GCHQ (you can search for that one if you want - some guy proved it with some very low level work on the modem for those with a BT home hmub 3 and an openreach VDSL modem. The modem was connected to two IP addresses and streaming all requests to the second.)

How about you search for it, before repeating this old tosh.

[TheVogon]

Re: Could be GCHQ that is playing up. Also, it's in Northern Ireland too

40GB != Infinity.

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10495/~/bt-broadband-usage-policy

If you exceed your usage allowance, you'll be charged for any additional usage in units of 5 gigabytes (Gb), at £5.60 per 5Gb or part thereof, which will appear in your next bill, and you will be sent an email to let you know.

Screw that.

[Franco]

Re: Could be GCHQ that is playing up. Also, it's in Northern Ireland too

You can get BT TV through another router - I use a Draytek and their support forums list several others that work successfully. BT won't support you, but given how useless their support is anyway that's no loss.

I switched routers after countless missed recordings and DNS issues across multiple devices. Their second-line support told me all my devices had the same fault (2 Windows PCs, an Xbox 360 and a Nexus 7) and it wasn't their router, then told me I wasn't being very helpful when I told him I wouldn't factory default the router. They also wouldn't give me an upgrade to the HH5 from HH3, even though they admitted that the HH3 had some issues (which they wouldn't tell me).

Back on topic, I'm not having any BT issues but I have my own DNS server that uses root hints and not forwarders. Even if I did use forwarders they'd be OpenDNS or Google and not BT DNS servers.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Could be GCHQ that is playing up. Also, it's in Northern Ireland too

"Their second-line support told me all my devices had the same fault"

BT's "second line support" are only slightly better trained monkeys than the first line ones. (Seriously, they have no technical qualifications/experience at all, just a different set of scripts and a couple of days extra training).

The magic words to use are "Service unfit for the purpose for which it was sold" and "breach of contract"

[CT]

Not just infinity

We're on bog-standard broadband, and for the last few days, we have had web pages loading half way, then stopping, only to load instantly the second or third time you try.

Intermittent problem though - just loaded The Register instantly first time, but clicking to get to the comments section took two reloads.

[Longrod_von_Hugendong]

Talking of fails...

WTF has happened to El Reg interface... did someone only half save the CSS file?

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Talking of fails...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/11/register_redesign/

but be warned, the negative comments are coming in faster than you can read them. 8 pages and counting...

[gotes]

Re: Talking of fails...

C'mon, it's hardly Windows 8...

[tentimes]

BT "internet helper" utility eating 25% CPU during this outtage

Just in case anyone is as stupid as me and had BT's connection health/helper program installed - it is eating 25% in spikes of CPU whilst this problem is going on. I don't know why I had it installed, but I noticed it's process eating huge spikes while this has been happening. It was making Inquisition unplayable with stuttering.

[Peter Martin]

Had a major outage here in rural Dorset on Wednesday evening for several hours. A traceroute showed packets getting lost in the ukcore.bt.net maze. No DNS either. Was it coincident at at approx the same time 1&1 DNS was broken as well.

Reported the next day as: "Yesterday afternoon at 4pm EST an unknown third party initiated a DDoS attack on 1&1's DNS infrastructure."

[Disgruntled of TW]

Is this an Openreach problem ... or BT Retail?

Anyone know?

[Irongut]

Re: Is this an Openreach problem ... or BT Retail?

BT retail. Openreach is working fine here.

[Any mouse Cow turd]

Change DNS

"Others claimed that BT customer services had told them it was a DNS issue, although switching DNS didn’t seem to help other users"

How do you switch DNS on a BT router? - they've locked it out!

[Kenny Millar]

Re: Change DNS

Don't do it on the router, ignore the router and set all your devices to over-ride the dns and use someone else's like google: 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4

[Billa Bong]

Re: Change DNS

Unless you want to use parental controls provided by BT, when doing this will cause the router to intercept all traffic to web sites that it didn't provide the IP for and show a "naughty naughty" page.

Clarification: by naughty naughty I didn't mean ooh matron - instead a big blue error message saying "use me for DNS or else no access for you"

[Mark Allen]

Re: Change DNS

@Billa Bong: That Parental Filter can be turned off in the router settings. Either per machine or in its entirety. Not as if it will stop the average teenager anyway - they just learn about Proxies and TOR to get round it. Joke is, in the average house, it is only the kids who understand how the filters work anyway.

[Kenny Millar]

Why anyone is still using the default BT DNS settings is beyond me.

Get stuck into your network preferences and change your DNS servers to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 - yes they belong to google, but they work far better than anything BT has to offer.

[Ben Norris]

You can't just change your DNS settings, because BT hijack all DNS. If you set your DNS to 8.8.8.8 you still get BT's server and not google. :(

[phil dude]

MITM attack?

So BT is running a MITM attack?

If the ISP provides DNS it should be entirely unfiltered. If YOU want them to filter it at YOUR house, that is fine. But leave the rest of us out, it gives the $CORPS bad ideas.

They can barely run an *unfiltered* network...

P.

[Afernie]

Re: MITM attack?

"So BT is running a MITM attack?"

They used to (and I'm guessing still do) employ a Phorm-like marketing company called Barefruit to hijack NXDOMAIN and serve ads, as I first found out when their 'service' prevented our staff at home using VPN (instead of reaching our Intranet it did a Yahoo search using our internal IP address as a keyword). Apparently, you can opt out. Of course, you'll need working broadband to do the opting out:

http://www.barefruit.com/

[Mark Allen]

So what's up with all the DNS outages?

We had VirginMedia having DNS problems only a short time ago as well. Add in 1&1 and this current BT issue. No doubt there are others not as loudly reported. So what has suddenly happened that all these big ISPs are having coincidental DNS problems. Is there some new security protocol being implemented that means more complexity for the support guys? Or is this just plain cock-ups all round?

Personally I use OpenDNS (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.200) which, like the 8.8.8.8 Google servers can either be put into the router settings for handing out via DHCP or into each desktop client by hand. (This also helps if your cheapo router gets hacked and the DNS settings compromised like so many of the cheapo routers at the moment... see old El'Reg articles)

[Cuddles]

3 days?

Bollocks to that, I've been having issues for over a week now. Oddly enough, Google seems to be one of the worst affected - gmail and Youtube are pretty much impossible to use at all, and I even had to start using Yahoo (no, they're not getting an exclamation mark from me) for searching. On the plus side, I've found out that other search engines have apparently finally caught up with Google and are actually usable, which is a big improvement over the last time I checked (probably a year or more ago).

[MrT]

Re: 3 days?

Exactly, but it's well over that here - things started going flaky more than a month ago - but of course the BT service checker says everything is fine. The giveaway is that Google often works, but about half of the links it suggests come up with "you are not connected" errors on iPad, SGS2 and 3, all the laptops etc. on the same line - but then close WiFi on the phones and they all load through EE rapidly and without hassle.

Directly typing a web address in got the same results, but using the actual IP address got through - unless it really is just that intermittent. Facebook will freeze half the time loading images, some of the Angry Birds games like SWII and to a lesser extent Seasons take 30-40secs to start over WiFi only to say it's still not connected (10secs over EE, fully connected), and stuff like the NASA app shows a bunch of empty boxes. Leave it a minute and everything but FB and AB might crawl back to normal. And BT are still trying to push Netflix etc. with a free YouView box - over a network that can't manage to serve up a full web page.

[Sgt_Oddball]

I wonder...

I'm on openreach through ee and I've seen some high lag spikes over the past few days (on world o' tanks for perennially bored). But no pages missing that I recall. Might be related, probably not though.

[sege122]

DNS

BT DNS is a well-known pile of xxxx the homehub can't be changed to use anything else which is it's major failing.

I have setup opendns on my main PC. I am acutally thinking about changing my router!

[TJ1]

Which protocols are affected?

Are all protocols affected or is it only unencrypted protocols such as HTTP (port 80) and DNS (port 53) ?

If only these then it sounds like deep packet inspection has found a bottomless pit :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Related...?

Yesterday, for the first time, I had BT overlay an invitation to enable parental protection settings over the top of a completely outside website - ebay if you must know.

As for the DNS, I found BT's DNS to be slow when I first got infinity a couple of years back, so I dumped their Home Hub 3 (which is also crap), it won't let you customise DNS settings, and replaced it with something a bit more open.

[BJC]

Re: Related...?

I had the same thing last night with the Parental Controls overlay, also for the first time. The site I was trying to get to was The Register! Frustratingly, clicking the options to ignore it didn't actually bring up the selected link (on The Register). Instead, I got stuck with an error.

The Parental Controls thing happened just after something else. I rebooted my PC. Following the restart, I got errors from the router telling me that it couldn't connect. I tried a couple of sites but it was adament. I then logged on to the router and all looked well. It worked fine after that. I don't know if it just cleared itself or if it was a result of logging on.

[Anonymous Coward]

seeing a lot of dns attacks

I've seen quite a lot of dns attacks/activity recently and am aware of other outages or problems caused by such attacks in the last few days, from my own experience I've seen lots of attempts to use our dns servers in amplification attacks, one recent one was at a rate of around 26 hits per second. It would appears someone probably has a botnet and is having fun sending faked udp dns requests to multiple dns servers to cause DOS attacks on their target.

[Nameless Dread]

Alway good to have a second option ...

Tuesday afternoon (9th) - couldn't get back onto a foreign site to complete a visa application I'd started earlier in the day. Web site gone unobtainable / down.

(House is on BT Internet in Central Scotland; router is not a BT jobby )

Could see foreign site OK through 3G via my mobe. Ergo - routing fail by BT ?

Changed my (non-BT) router to use other DNS services:

Prim'y DNS: ... 8.8.8.8 ... ... ... ... ... Google

Secondary: ... 208.267.222.222 ... OpenDNS

Success! Didn't even have to tinker with PC's Network settings.

Icon: Didn't fancy BT parentally controlling my connection, therefore non-BT router

Also, when I swapped to non-BT router, my download speed increased by 30% = Win + Win!

Probably won't bother to revert ...

[T I M B O]

BT to credit your account.

BT may tell you that when there is an issue such as this they will say we will calculate how many days and credit accordingly, but this is really what happens. You will telephone [phone] & use the option for technical help. You will then say how many days you have been without Broadband, but they will then say, you need to speak to customer services. So you then ask to be transferred and more than likely they will say you need to redial. You then redial and go to customer services that is not an option, you naturally select the option for cancelling your service and hey presto! You then ask for a credit for how long you have been without internet & they will say, you need to speak to technical. At which point is a good idea to ask for a MAC code, which works much better. I do appreciate that this would have taken about an hour of your time. I used to speak to BT about once or twice a month and that’s when BT was better at customer services. I do feel sorry for BT users.