Never had this on FTTC

EMERGENCY MAINTENANCE

Hello,

We're carrying out emergency maintenance on our network. This means Customers in Hereford, Henley & Sandhurst will experience service interruption on 11-08-2026 whilst we work to resolve a fault within our network.

When: 11-08-2026

Time: Between 01:00 - 04:00

Expected downtime: 20 mins

What do I need to do?

Please do not switch off your zzoomm equipment during this time.
If you have trouble getting back online after 06:00, simply restart your zzoomm Hub.
Thanks for your patience while we make these improvements!

The Zzoomm Team

It don't happen often, and it is early in the morning, but i don't remember FTTC having this. I presume other networks must do this now and again including Open reach on their Full fibre networks.

I am not bothered, as i said it is early in the morning, but would be a pain if I had something that needed to stay connected., I do, but it is not essential.

Very different from my experience of copper (and possibly aluminium) delivered services. My average uptime was 7 days max. Now I'm currently at 63 days + on fibre.

My cabinet was ~800m. away whereas distance is nowadays more or less irrelevant as I understand it. I'm sure fttc was OK for some but for the likes of me it was a p.i.t.a.

p.s. Overnight network maintenance has always been done as far back as I can remember anyway.

Edited by longedge (Tue 11-Aug-26 10:02:58)

It's relatively common for FTTC and FTTP connections to resync overnight, due to either OR or SP updating their firmware or configs. But 20-minute outages? No.

I think you have to accept that when you're dealing with a small and cheap provider, you don't get the same level of redundancy which could keep the service running during changes.

But to their credit, if they announced the outage, and they stick to that window, it's better than just breaking the service without warning.

I think the only difference is that you're being told about it. FTTC had maintenance windows but usually on broadband services it's expected that there will be overnight disruption, with no prior notification.

Didn't you not just change ISP but you changed entire network when you went from Plusnet to your current provider. Plusnet just didn't tell you when they did maintenance, maybe they didn't do any that would impact users very often. (ie, had a large and diverse network).

Nothing to do with the "last mile" technology this (dialup, ADSL, FTTC, FTTP, or wet string).

In reply to a post by jpm:

I think the only difference is that you're being told about it. FTTC had maintenance windows but usually on broadband services it's expected that there will be overnight disruption, with no prior notification.

You could be right.
Nice of them to tell us.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Didn't you not just change ISP but you changed entire network when you went from Plusnet to your current provider. Plusnet just didn't tell you when they did maintenance, maybe they didn't do any that would impact users very often. (ie, had a large and diverse network).

Nothing to do with the "last mile" technology this (dialup, ADSL, FTTC, FTTP, or wet string).

Yes, I went from Plusnet on the Openreach network to Zzoomm on their own FTTP network. I just don't remember being told about updates and issues, but I presume they just did not tell us. I don't remember my router telling me it lost connection on FTTC. Saying that I did not have this router on there for long.

To be honest, with this heat i am surprised we don't get more issues. Zzoomm has a large cabinet near our Aldi, I used to pass it when i went to work, and the fan was pretty loud then. When I went to Aldi a couple of weeks ago when we had that high heat, the fan seemed to be even louder

Pn definitally had down time .......... mostly in the wee hours..... Sadly i don't have emails to back that up and also reoccurent dns issues back when i was there

Edited by Taras (Tue 11-Aug-26 18:58:29)

Back in the day Talk Talk used to tell you about maintenance at the local exchange level. There were hundreds of overnight maintenance windows up and down the country on a weekly basis

So its certainly nothing new

Other ISP networks do have maintenance but they don't always announce when they are doing it.

Example, I joined Community Fibre in March and in 5 months the connection has been rock solid except for one time the Linksys SPNM60CF Pinnacle 2.0 Mesh Router showed that the connection Uptime had been reset.

Initially I thought it was a network fault. But then I checked and noticed the firmware was updated!
The number changed (increased) to FW Version: 1.01.18.26050112. The problem is that despite the fact that I had marked to disable automatic firmware update, the ISP does not seem to respect that setting in the router and decided at night to reboot the router for a firmware update.

Anyway, that was 64 days ago and the connection uptime has remained stable.

You could have emergency maintenance if some rodent/crime took place to damage the fibre optic cables somewhere in your area where it may not have affected your connection but the provider is doing repair works and retesting to see if they had corrected the repair. This may then result in your connection re-syncing.

With TalkTalk FTTC I remember often this was happening without any announcement and I was left with no internet for 10-20 minutes or so. But when checking on the account status it would show some maintenance in certain areas including website maintenance that happen to have coincided with the interruption. Yet on many occasions it would show no fault in the area.

After switching to BT FTTC those issues were largely addressed as BT for me was a better service than TalkTalk. Now I am with Community Fibre 1Gbps and of-course so far so good. At least I don't have to worry about DLM, noise margin issues and drop-outs due to line faults.

I always appreciate if they make announcements to let the customers know. The problem is that on many occasions you have to manually search to find out if a maintenance is happening. The router firmware upgrades also randomly occur without announcement making you psychologically unprepared for a drop. This could be a problem if you are in the middle of something important.

Is a small bit of downtime or router reboot to update firmware an issue for the majority if its in the small hours? There is a reason they happen in the middle of the night, as most people are asleep.

Im just trying to think of a scenario where it would be

Just thought of something, I did not have a email from Zzoomm this time saying it would be down, normally they do. I got the info from their site while looking for something else.

It did go off according to my router and my Switchbot hubs. Everything seems to have reconnected.

My router I check for updates every couple of months or so, not been a update for months now, I expect TP-link have decided there is no need for one, the router or a V2 version of it is still produced.


I have put it on little legs to lift it off the shelf, just to get some more air under it.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

Example, I joined Community Fibre in March and in 5 months the connection has been rock solid except for one time the Linksys SPNM60CF Pinnacle 2.0 Mesh Router showed that the connection Uptime had been reset.

Initially I thought it was a network fault. But then I checked and noticed the firmware was updated!
The number changed (increased) to FW Version: 1.01.18.26050112. The problem is that despite the fact that I had marked to disable automatic firmware update, the ISP does not seem to respect that setting in the router and decided at night to reboot the router for a firmware update.

If its the ISP's router its their asset to protect so you shouldn't be disabling the automatic updates, if its your router then they shouldn't be updating it without your consent.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

the ISP does not seem to respect that setting in the router and decided at night to reboot the router for a firmware update.

A good thing, imagine driving a car with a known hole in the windscreen, you'd want that fixed ASAP.

If you don't want the ISP updating the router, then either use your own, or put your own on the inside of the ISP one. I do that with Virgin Media as I have to use their box to connect to the coax cable.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I just don't remember being told about updates and issues, but I presume they just did not tell us. I don't remember my router telling me it lost connection on FTTC.

AAISP used to have a web page showing all the BTwholesale and exchange work, that impacted ALL ISPs using the BTw backhaul. I suspect most work at 2am on Plusnet and BTw and Openreach, so it impacts least number of users.

Not all Openreach based ISPs use BTw, and they will have different maintenance schedules.

Edited by jchamier (Wed 12-Aug-26 10:26:32)

I had an outage this morning on Plusnet FTTP at 12:15AM for 20 minutes. Presumably upgrading something like an edge router.

Indeed, it is the ISP router.
However, from the settings as you can see from my screenshot there is a toggle button to switch it on and off...
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/55459463962_fb47...

Unlike all the other ISPs that I had from Sky, Plusnet, TalkTalk, BT, etc under both FTTC and ADSL2+ they didn't have the toggle button to disable Automatic Firmware. Naturally of-course a firmware upgrade was more obvious. But as always, those ISPs never notify their customers when they will update their routers. It is random and it happens at night.

But under Community Fibre, they use the official Linksys routers but these original Retail versions have been modified using Community Fibre software branding. So, despite the toggle button being there, it is superficial and has no effect as they have full control to bypass this toggle switch.

The old Linksys MX4200 for Community Fibre can be reflashed using the original official retail firmware software version! That opens the way to use it for other ISPs and gives the option to now disable the firmware without it being auto-updated.

This is the router Community Fibre Supplied https://support.linksys.com/kb/article/8606-en/?sect...
If the Linksys SPNM60CF Pinnacle 2.0 Mesh Router has an official firmware I could then potentially reflash it.

I have no problem with updating the firmware, I just want to be able to have complete control over it and do it when I want to! That's one reason I use Windows 10 LTSC Enterprise 21H2 as this gives me the option to manually update Windows without Microsoft automatically updating Windows. And if I want to install security updates, I can always do it when I want to.

The toggle switch button is deceiving and may make the customer think the connection dropped out due to network outage or router fault. Albeit, this was only for a couple of minutes and at least I was aware of it as the number was changed. But for less technically informed users they won't know and will blame the ISP for being unreliable.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

EMERGENCY MAINTENANCE

Hello,

We're carrying out emergency maintenance on our network. This means Customers in Hereford, Henley & Sandhurst will experience service interruption on 11-08-2026 whilst we work to resolve a fault within our network.

When: 11-08-2026

Time: Between 01:00 - 04:00

Expected downtime: 20 mins

What do I need to do?

Please do not switch off your zzoomm equipment during this time.
If you have trouble getting back online after 06:00, simply restart your zzoomm Hub.
Thanks for your patience while we make these improvements!

The Zzoomm Team

It don't happen often, and it is early in the morning, but i don't remember FTTC having this. I presume other networks must do this now and again including Open reach on their Full fibre networks.

I am not bothered, as i said it is early in the morning, but would be a pain if I had something that needed to stay connected., I do, but it is not essential.

What does their TOS state about uptime and connection availability? Pretty sure they won't claim 100% uptime to allow for things like this! The hint that the works were an Emergency, sort of gives you the impression that they weren't expecting it either. The fact they published it should be commended; instead, I kind of get the impression from your post that it was inconvenient to you.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

That's one reason I use Windows 10 LTSC Enterprise 21H2 as this gives me the option to manually update Windows without Microsoft automatically updating Windows.

If I recall correctly that is EOL in less the 6 months time (don't suspect you are licenced to use it as its only available through the volume licence process), the obsession with being in control is overrated especially with those sitting at home thinking they know best. I appreciate you don't want to be an early adopter of patch releases but picking and choosing updates is crazy. I'm out of the loop now but when Windows 10 was about to launched I had a private week long workshop with the techies from Microsoft with their best guys coming over from Redmond, learned some really interesting stuff not available to the general public.

There are a few good reasons why I chose to switch to this version. Telemetry can be turned off normally, no Microsoft Store (where you had to deal with Candy Crush Saga being auto-installed), Microsoft Edge can be uninstalled normally without a script! No new Windows feature update that often resets your settings back to default.

Oh and no Gamebar Presence Writer, that process is known to cause stuttering and fps drops in certain games.

You can indeed tweak the regular Home/Pro version and eradicate these nuisances with registry editing. I have Windows 10 Pro license key as well. But it is a very big job to have to disable automatic Microsoft Store Update, telemetry, Cortana (of-course later removed). Every time you reformat Windows you have to go through all that hassle again from scratch.

This LTSC Enterprise version as well as the IoT is probably one of the best versions you can get without having to go through the hassle of tweaking things from scratch.

When a new feature update gets pushed out, it resets many of the settings back to default. You suddenly find that the Microsoft Store reinstalled Candy Crush Saga, etc without your consent.

All we really need is security updates. This version only pushes security updates and no feature updates. The problem is that if Windows suddenly gives you a notification that you must restart your computer while you are in the middle of a game, especially online chess, this can be a disaster. You can postpone the restart but if you accidentally click on it while it pops out, your PC will restart and you could end your game progress, (whatever you are doing that's important).

The same goes with Router firmware updates. I remember once this happened while I was on Lichess at night in the middle of an online game. Luckily both Lichess and Chess.com gives you 30 seconds to 2 minutes to return to your game before it forfeits you. I quickly logged from my Android phone and used my SIM Network Data to rejoin my chess game and that way I rescued myself from getting a loss. That's how I have zero disconnections in online chess as I am prepared for this unexpected event and have my phone always placed on my PC desk table.

But if you play FIFA (now EAFC), eFootball or other video games you have no choice, it will mark as defeated.

I am generally happy with the ISP routers except for their auto firmware updates. On FTTC and ADSL2+, this was a problem as this could trigger DLM or make the speed fluctuate. The copper line doesn't know the router was rebooted for a firmware and thinks there is a line issue. But on Full Fibre now at least we don't have to worry about DLM, Noise Margins, etc. I'll never return back to FTTC unless there is a major outage issue with Community Fibre that goes beyond repair. Just wished there were more wholesale options and would be nice if in future I get at least a second FTTP option available.

In reply to a post by Banger:

I had an outage this morning on Plusnet FTTP at 12:15AM for 20 minutes. Presumably upgrading something like an edge router.

I had one yesterday for 10 seconds, on everything We had a power cut. By the time everything rebooted, it exceeded 10 seconds. I was surprised that everything reconnected, normally after a power cut there is always something that doesn't connect. Used to be the unit for the heating, but I have changed that now.

In reply to a post by Bryer:

What does their TOS state about uptime and connection availability? Pretty sure they won't claim 100% uptime to allow for things like this! The hint that the works were an Emergency, sort of gives you the impression that they weren't expecting it either. The fact they published it should be commended; instead, I kind of get the impression from your post that it was inconvenient to you.

4.7 We cannot guarantee fault-free performance. Due to the nature of the internet, your internet access availability and performance may vary from time to time. In addition, the performance, nature and limitations of WiFi or your devices may affect the actual speed that you experience. We cannot guarantee WiFi speed or coverage throughout your property. If you use your Zzoomm internet connection for making and receiving telephone calls and need an uninterrupted facility that is protected from loss of internet availability or other sources of disruption (such as power cuts), you should consider either (i) using a UPS to power your Zzoomm equipment and your telephony devices or (ii) ensure you have a back-up telephony capability that is not mains-powered such as a mobile phone.

I know very well that it will not be 100% fault free, not much is these days, certainly as we rely on products that have firmware and software inside. As a mate found out a couple of weeks ago with his printer, firmware went belly up when it was updating. Thankfully, we got it working again. Told him not to buy HP.

Zzoomm used to send emails when updates was happening, but since they merged, they have stopped doing that, i only found it because I was looking for some info for someone else.

As for your impression, it is so wrong, not inconvenient for me at all. Even if it happened in the daytime, I would just read or listen to music.

The only small issue would be if some of my stuff did not reconnect

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

If I recall correctly that is EOL in less the 6 months time (don't suspect you are licenced to use it as its only available through the volume licence process), the obsession with being in control is overrated especially with those sitting at home thinking they know best. I appreciate you don't want to be an early adopter of patch releases but picking and choosing updates is crazy. I'm out of the loop now but when Windows 10 was about to launched I had a private week long workshop with the techies from Microsoft with their best guys coming over from Redmond, learned some really interesting stuff not available to the general public.

I used to and still do to a certain extent like to be in control, not6 as bad as i used to be, I just wanted to know what was being put onto my devices.

I don't allow my Mac to auto-update, I don't want it to update to the latest OS without me knowing, certainly when the new Golden Gate one comes out. I let security updates happen, well, download, and then they can update when I want it to. On Windows, I never let anything download unless I saw what it was first, these days, i have auto update on it, but then I don't really use my Windows machine that much.
My phone is on tell me there are updates, for both apps and OS, but again, I just have a brief look and allow it to get on with it.

Post deleted by seb

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

I have Windows 10 Pro license key as well.

A Pro licence doesn't cover you to use Windows 10 LTSC Enterprise, you can give me all the reasons in the world why its better but its not available to individuals or even SMBs.

This isn't the first time you have naively come on here spouting stuff about you and your family avoiding paying your way, I'm sure you have spoken about living in a council property while renting another out in east London. [removed by tbb].

Never said a pro license covered me to use a Windows 10 LTSC Enterprise Edition. But I mentioned that I separately owned a license key for the Pro version before reformatting Windows and freshly reinstalling an LTSC version as a test for performance comparison. This has been recommended in Windows 10 Forums and you'll find benchmark tests on YouTube as well with a few frame rates higher and lower memory usage. There is definitely less RAM and processes under this version. With the RAM crisis right now many who are still on 16GB RAM or less will benefit from a lighter version. I was looking to upgrade a few months back for myself as I built one for my dad with 32GB DDR5 RAM for just £86 8 months ago just before the RAM prices exploded! Btw, he uses Windows 11 Pro, no problem as he has enough memory to overcome all the heavy processes.

Whether we as individuals are entitled to use such versions of Windows officially or not is a matter of dispute. It has been argued by many reviewers that Microsoft should have given us more control like it did under Windows 7. There is so much advertisements, telemetry, bloatware in a native version of Windows 10/11 that what Microsoft is doing is very unfair for consumers especially to less tech savvy users who have to troubleshoot and tweak things to have a smooth experience.

I also remember you asked me a couple of years ago whether I found a solution to the "Metadata staging failed errors", which you happened to see me post on the TenForums. Again, that's another reason why I switched over as a test. I had some compatibility issues with my Razer Huntsman V2 keyboard where it would randomly stop typing for half a second, this issue was also resolved for me after upgrading to new SSD and new LTSC version. Maybe there was some driver issue, I don't know but I really would hate to have to troubleshoot again just to reinstall the Pro version again just to see if those issues re-emerge.

As for the property I am living in with my parents, I never mentioned we were council residents. In fact quite the opposite, I mentioned we were leaseholders paying so much service charge that it was unfair how some social housing tenants who don't pay a penny have multiple FTTP overbuilds. I also mentioned that, that was also another reason why moving and selling home wasn't so simple just to have FTTP. It was at the time when I was still struggling to get a wayleave agreement where Hyperoptic was rejected by our Technical Services Manager despite being a Hyperoptic Champion persuading 30+ residents to register their interest. Finally a wayleave was agreed for Community Fibre and it went live 3 years ago thanks to a government intervention to change wayleave laws.

There have been quite a few irrational advises over the years from some posters suggesting to sell the flat and buy a house somewhere in Richmond something that when I look back it's not even a rational idea just for FTTP unless we had many other problems to deal with.

The other 2 properties my parents rent out are both Leasehold as well. Nothing we are doing is illegal, we are just privileged that my dad bought them over 20 years ago under right to buy scheme, since he is a Medical Doctor and prices were much more affordable back then. At no point did I intent to brag and show-off but merely to compare how 2 properties under Tower Hamlets Homes had multiple FTTP networks such as Community Fibre and Hyperoptic while the property we are living under managed by EastendHomes struggled to make an agreement for the first FTTP network that I was calling them out since 2015 only for it to take 6 years later for a wayleave and then 20 months later for it to go live. Oh and btw, I'm not from [removed by tbb], I come from a mixed European background, that you would never be able to guess and frankly it is completely irrelevant and off-topic to this discussion unless we are discussing FTTP availability comparison between our countries!

Edited by seb (Mon 17-Aug-26 17:54:26)

Post deleted by seb

There's absolutely no need to make references to other countries which aren't relevant to the topic of this thread and which could be construed in a way which was racist, whether or not intended in such a way.