Lucky bloke - I've had lines up and down all week, but only my Zen ones

Not blaming Zen at all, finger pointed firmly at BT as it is clear the 21CN isn't up to par as major node failures seem to be a regular occurrence, when they do fix things Zen have to load balance their links to ensure everyone gets optimum service.

Looking at the lights on my router on Friday this seems to be a process of kicking off individual connections so that the BT kit tries another link as my PPP session was going on and off for several hours.

Now. if BT's network is as advanced as they make out why is it necessary for an ISP to carry out such load balancing as BT's systems know how many customers the ISP has and how many links the ISP has.

I am staying with Zen but I sincerely hope they do think about offering an alternative to a BT link as it BT that so often lets them down.

I'm blaming Zen for one reason. I pay Zen. It really isn't my problem who they choose to work with - they could do LLU, could work with other carriers, but for whatever reason use BT. I can't control that, and they have far more influence over things than I as an individual (they pay them millions I would imagine by now).

The buck ultimately stops with Zen I'm afraid because it is them that is charged with delivering my service, and while I know in reality BT have a lot of influence, Zen have made some of these issues worse.

My connections were mostly working after the mornings madness (which fortunately wasn't too severe) - but then it was ZEN that went and did the load balancing (was it really sane to do it at half 3 on a Friday - surely there are better times than just before the end of the working week for an ISP that claims to be great for business?!?

ISPs should be working more closely with BT to improve matters and making sure they hold suppliers to account. If BTs service and method of handling sessions and load control is not ideal, then the onus is with Zen to get it sorted.

Not trying to punt A&A here (as I was a Zen customer some years ago), but A&A do offer connections on the BE back-haul. This is costly though compared to a *CN connection, so it seems if you want the reliability and quality, you need to pay the money for it.

Which is a shame, because I mostly agree with you - I don't remember things being this unstable when I was with Zen (through BT) 5 or so years back (on 20CN). Rather disappointing.

Though I guess what we are seeing is expected. BT are what they are, government funded and all that. For a platform that is for the masses, it's only logical that it turns into one of the poorer quality, unreliable infrastructures for broadband. A bit like the NHS (possibly, maybe). Reminds me why I always go private for dental care.

Anyway, the outages don't annoy me. If they were for an hour during the evenings (when I'm at home), several times a month, then that would be a different story. One thing I can say about the ISP I'm with now is - if my connection isn't working, it's either my fault or BT's fault. And most of the time, it's BT's.

In reply to a post by Sandgrounder:

In reply to a post by therioman:

After all the various issues this week ........

No issues here - normal service all week, as usual.

Nothing here either. No problems at all.

What an ISP claims to be able to deliver and what they manage to are not always (and mostly not) the same. You mention you administer many circuits, of a business critical nature (I presume). I think it would be fair to say that any business which is relying on the stability of broadband run over a rock bottom standard infrastructure known as 'the phone line' is, for the most part, probably not a business that is serious about paying proper money for a solid connection to the internet. If it really was that important to them, they would be going the SDSL/leased line route.

I know, such technologies are way more expensive, but the reason is simple. Different infrastructure, away from the rest of the commoners and peasants like myself which use the cheap (phone line) based infrastructure.

I understand your frustration by saying it should be Zen sorting this out, but you surely realise what you were signing up to when setting up the accounts. An SLA was probably not even in the terms of service. So to complain and rant here about that is futile. You would be better protesting with your feet, and moving, either to another provider which doesn't use the BT 21CN network, or SDSL/leased line where appropriate. If the businesses you are managing can't or are unwilling to do this, then they must pay for that decision by make doing with a less reliable connection. Someone within those organisation needs to assess what such a decision would cost them in the long run (in terms of money they would make/lose for the time they don't have connectivity) when faced with such outages as this one.

I setup my brother's business with BE. It mostly works. It offers enough reliable connectivity to provide them with what they need, and to perform daily incremental backups from his office up north down to Reading. O2 were trying to grab his custom last year by getting him to move (which I don't really understand considering O2/Be are the same damn provider now) and BE persuaded him to stay by offering him his current package (Be Unlimited) with static IP for just £12 a month. But he knows there's no SLA on it. And so do I. If it fails, we hope it comes back soon - and most times, it does. It's not a mission critical event for his company if that happens, just an inconvenience.

I'm blaming Zen for one reason. I pay Zen. It really isn't my problem who they choose to work with.

It is your problem though. For me, I've come to realise that if I pay a little bit more, I get a drastically better service (the ISP I am currently with). But the connection they provide is still only as good as the infrastructure it uses, an infrastructure which is clearly documented on their website as I went through the sign-up process! As I said in my other post on this thread, at least if my connection does fail, I can more than likely pin point it to BT being the cause rather than my ISP (making reference to failed DNS servers, high latency, and various other issues I've seen folk post about over the last several months on these forums across many other ISPs). For me, it seems A&A provide the best service they can given the flaws of the infrastructure they have to work with. That's all any customer can ask for.

I think Zen are the same breed. Although, if load balancing is one of the aftermath issues caused by such outages as these, I agree they should be doing their best to obviate these issues where possible. I think (but maybe a Zen representative can confirm this) that the load balancing is actually done at BT's side, not Zen's, which is why Zen then have to re-distribute users after such an event, and why it is so disruptive to their customers when they have to knock people off and let them reconnect again to spread the load. I'm sure this is something that can be addressed, but maybe it's not a high priority. Either way, if it bothers you that much, maybe it is time to walk and join another provider.

In reply to a post by mixt:

BT are what they are, government funded and all that.

BT are a publicly traded company and are generally not government funded (though they do have Patricia Hewitt on their board so you could be forgiven for thinking they were and as their shareholders can still pretty much hold the country to ransom as the copper to your home/business still belomgs to Openreach whether you use an LLU provider or not)

I'm sure Zen did the load balancing because they were getting calls about poor performance when the circuits reconnected so they acted to correct this which as a quality ISP I would expect them to do so.

The problem affected all BT based ISPs so they need to work together to get BT to sort their act out as time and time again ofcom has proved to be toothless.

Edited by techguy (Sun 23-Oct-11 16:29:06)

Thanks for correcting me.

Np but no offence meant.

I'd really like to see Openreach and Wholesale mutually owned by all of the service providers (bit like LINX and LoNAP), it would therefore be run for the benefit of its members and not shareholders.

No offence taken. I made the government reference as that's how BT feel to me - they are, after all, probably the largest and most well known Telecom company in the UK (like AT&T in the US), although maybe Sky is giving them a run for their money these days?

My point is if BT ran into financial trouble, the government wouldn't let them fail, just like the government wont let the banks fail. BT have so much of a monopoly; it would be pretty messy if they were to crash. Companies this big can't because the establishment doesn't let them (I guess this is why, as you say, they are British Telecom PLC). They offer a valuable service to most of the country, and in this information age, broadband is becoming a paramount necessity. But like all corporations which are this large, that are this engrained into the system, it's you and me, the tax payer, who bails them out when things go wrong. And we wonder why our taxes are so high? (and show no sign of decreasing?). This is leading onto a rant, so I will stop here.

Regarding shareholders, of course, money makes the world go round. 'tis all about keeping the shareholders happy. BT provide a frame work which delivers broadband to the masses. As such, it's going to have problems with quality. Just like the NHS provides health care to the masses, it also has issues with quality. Though in both cases, on the whole, they do provide a fairly reasonable service. But it has these niggly issues of unreliability, and instability which I have come to expect, given what both of these corporations are underneath.

And that's why I find it strange when people complain about it because, really, it is unlikely to improve over night. Much better just moving to another more private / niche / alternative provider, a bit like when I choose to go private for my dental care.