B2B ISP Fastnet staggers back to feet after VMware incident

Brighton-based ISP and hosting provider Fastnet has emerged from a trying week which involved battling VMware/Broadcom tech issues that have downed a number of its customers' websites. The outage began on August 13, at which point Fastnet said its technical team was engaged "at the highest level with the vendor" and was …

[Dr Who]

DNS

"I think it goes to show how important but overlooked DNS is in the underpinnings of the internet," the source told us.

This "source" should not be in charge of anybody's IT systems. Bit like when Dominic Raab (then Brexit secretary) said he "hadn't quite understood" how reliant UK trade in goods is on the Dover-Calais crossing.

[Jamie Jones]

Re: DNS

Even for my own hobby/personal domains I run 3 geographically (and AS-network) independent DNS authoritative servers.

[Mike007]

Re: DNS

DNS is often referred to as "the phone book of the internet".

I think this is a reference to the fact that people pay so little attention to it that most people haven't noticed that BT stopped sending them out several years ago.

[Julian Poyntz]

Re: DNS

less said about BT's DNS servers the better..... does anyone still use them ? All the people I know who had BT I moved their DNS to good/opendns years ago

[EAK-TREG]

Things that make you say "Hmmmmmmm"

VMWare announces a 0 day remote access exploit that they "strongly recommend" ou patch "immediately" and a major internet connected ISP running on VMWare has a "sudden, unknown cause outage"

Hmmmmmm......

And there is a Microsoft DNS related 0 day posted at almost the same time that can grant root privledge...

Hmmmmmmmm......

But its just coincidence. Move along... move along....

[Anonymous Coward]

Days since it was DNS...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic

Was started by people that left Trident, the MSP that sits in the offices below them in the same building. Ironically, when Fastnet went down it took Trident's services with them. So much "for the cloud". We're up North and lost access for a bit because of the DNS outage. The fact it lasted for days suggests it was that VMWare exploit. Considering the price rises Broadcom have done with VMWare, I'm surprised they are still using them.

[Vikingforties]

Re: Ironic

It's a bit reflective of a lot of the UK cloud / hosting industry. Most providers* here seem to think that lobbing a few VMWare instances and backup services to customers constitutes the cloud. Trying not to be down on my own country, but I spend way more time talking to and visiting providers and CSPs on the European mainland who tend to be doing things more customers want.

* thankfully, there are a few UK based companies that seem to be doing something interesting. Good luck to them.