Have AAISP lost the plot

My internet connection died at about 11:00 this morning. Fortunately after re-booting my router four times it came up again.

However, this is the thirteenth interruption to my service since 23rd August. When I phone support the phone is sometimes not answered and even wken it is the support staff mutter in such dejected voices that I find it difficult to understand what they are saying. Because of this I have raised a support ticket and had a long exchange of emails, I am currently awaiting a follow-up to AAISPS last email of 18th September when they promised to "try and diagnose the problem further"

Is anyone else having similar problems?


PS

The useage stats are screwed as well, I have lost my carry forward from last month, but they have put me on a 5GB allowance, which given that the basic is 2GB and the incremental steps are 2GB would appear to be impossible.

Edited by deleted (Thu 01-Oct-09 11:49:07)

That does sound very unlike them.

Some info on the status page on both these issues here which are apparently related.
I'm also showing 5gb allowance instead of 4 at the moment and last month shows a 4gb allowance instead of 6gb.

But yes, starting to get a bit annoying now!

On the bright side never had any issues dealing with support

The usage stats is an issue that is being worked on, more information on the status page here;
http://aaisp.blogspot.com/2009/10/open-usage-stats-l...

The problem with lines dropping was a rather unfortunate side-affect or our RADIUS system receiving updates to sessions it thought was invalid - and hence dropped the session - this did cause a lot of lines to be dropped. Information posted here:
http://aaisp.blogspot.com/2009/10/info-radius-issues...
(Normally lines would log in again in a matter of seconds when dropped - but due to a separate BT problem, when there is a high number of customer trying to log in, BT's systems are a bottleneck and causes delays with reconnections - this is an issue which BT say they will have resolved shortly (in the few weeks))

The problems we've had previously were due to problem with our LNS (the routers that terminate the incoming sessions from customer, via BT/BE) - These problems have been worked around - and today's problem was not caused by the LNS's.

Obviously stability as our prime concern, and we do apologise for these outages.

Dethadol - If you can PM details about when you called in, I'll find out who 'mutters' - thanks.

I'm very concerned about any of my staff muttering and sounding dejected.

Good tech support is key to us. Please do let Andrew know the details so we can improve this.

We know things break, as they did today, and we work to solve any problems that happen, fix them so they stop happening, and try and stop things breaking in the first place. But it is also important to us that we are open and honest which is why it often looks like we have more problems than many other ISPs. Whilst today's issue was down to us, the vast majority of issues we are facing are ones that face all BT 21CN ISPs the same. It is our constant vigilance and persistence that is getting BT to sort these wider issues (for everyone's benefit).

Today's issues are almost certainly the same underlying cause which is down to a database problem. The usage stats will be sorted later today. I am meant to be on holiday myself, but I have been working on this all day. If BT did not have broken RADIUS then it would have been a very brief blip today as lines should have immediately reconnected. However, I have put in place work-arounds as even that is not acceptable. The longer term fix will be later this month when we carry our a major upgrade on the master database servers.

I do hope we can convince you that we have not lost the plot.

--
Adrian
Director

Similar problems myself, a bit fed up with it yes of course I am but I've got to say on the service front I've found A&A excellent.

However, to me all of these problems seem to stem from the changeover from centrals to IPSC nodes. Now having gone through hell and back with my previous ISP Entanet when they changed over to have this all over again is really doing my head in right now, the main difference though with A&A is their excellent comms and that's reassuring for any customer after having experienced the total opposite with useless Entanet. But I really am getting sick of all of these disconnects, my line is up and down like never before. I tried re-booting my router about 10 times earlier plus a router power down and nothing - just would not connect, support even killed my line from both their end & BT's but still nada. Had to swap over my router to an old wired one to get my line kick started again and so far today I've wasted several hours messing about with this.

So my question to A&A is:- Firstly do you also put these problems down to the changeover to IPSC on 20CN and do *YOU* see an end to these disconnection problems and light at the end of the tunnel?

In reply to a post by andrewhearn:

(Normally lines would log in again in a matter of seconds when dropped - but due to a separate BT problem, when there is a high number of customer trying to log in, BT's systems are a bottleneck and causes delays with reconnections - this is an issue which BT say they will have resolved shortly (in the few weeks))

I seem to remember that BT were quoting 25 September as the resolution date for this problem. So it seems as though it has slipped.