coms down?

Anyone else? Can sync just not connect since midnight

I got up at 04.30 and it was down. Rang Coms to be told they have a network outage which started around 22.30 - 23.00 and were working hard to resolve it. Router log had been trying to connect since 01:30 but I reckon wasn't showing all attempts to connect.

To be honest, not 100% convinced they hadn't fixed it in ~9 hours if they had been trying and came here expecting to see a lot of people not being able to connect.... No news on the site either that I could see.

Also rang em. Routine maintenance that went tits up and they're aware of it. Probably ttb mess up. Routine maintenance with ttb took Xilo down before

Yup down here.

What makes it all the more annoying is I have a fibre from gigaclear poking up in my driveway and I'm counting the last few days for the final connection before I can be rid of this bunch of promise breaking losers forever!

I got told it was maintenance gone wrong and the coms engineers didn't know till 8.30 this morning. Should be back shortly and they will something on the coms fault page

Thanks Bob. Fingers crossed! Although I was told at 04:30 that they were aware and had been working on it since the previous night. Bit of a time lapse there.

Unless they meant the maintenance? Seems work was being done last night but something went wrong

Nope. Helpdesk definitely said they were aware of a network wide outage and had been working on it. No word of maintenance

Did you ring at 4:30? I rang at 7 and was told the tech department aren't open until 8

Yes I did. Rang the old number and a recorded message gave the new number (0330 300 9000). So rang that, put into a queue (go figure) and a girl answered. I wasn't sure if I'd heard the number correctly as the recorded message was pretty bad quality, but she did mention Coms in her opening sentence so I was sure I'd got through to the right people.

I rang that number and also the 9001 and was told wrong department. They just said to me 30 mins hopefully to be back online. We shall see

Is it back up yet?

I just received a self-congratulatory "What's been happening this month" email from Coms (via connection at work) that negected to mention the total collapse of their system today....

Way to go guys!

Yea up since 11.30am

It's been absolutely atrocious for the past 40 minutes or so. Constant disconnects and, on checking my router log, almost constant drops and authentication fails since 03.30. Even when I did get back in I couldn't browse due to ridiculously slow speed.

What on earth is going on?

I had 3 between 6:30-7 nothing before that

And its playing up again. Anyone else?

Same here, its all over the place :/

Have you rung them? Seems CS dont work weekends!

Get through to them, get told to ring a different number. Do that and they say they cant help

I've not rung them, seems ok at the moment. Nothing on there status page about it.

How long you been connected now without it dying?

And there status page is useless, didnt have anything for the major 12 hour outage yesterday

About 10 minutes since last drop. Had about 20 minutes of constant up and down. I assume they are fixing something and its sorted for a while now.

I doubt it, you cant talk to Broadband Tech Support on a weekend, and i dont think Coms have any monitoring software to tell them about problems. They rely on us moaning to them.

Does your router say why the connection dropped? My logs dont say anythingother than it was disconnected

Router logs say nothing much really only "Call drop because echo reply not received in time"

Just see how things go over the weekend.

What a shambles! As well as yesterday's outage (which appears to have been resolved at 12:30, not that their status page on their new site said anything), it went off for me c. 06:00 today. I managed to get an active connectionf for a couple of minutes this morning, before it dropped, and haven't been able to connect since.Each time, my connection to the exchange is stable, with a good sync. The problem is obtaining a WAN IP, thus registering on their network. It smells like a Radius fault.

I explained to Coms yesterday that their status page reported no problems, nor that it had been resolved. She was surprised that that was the case as she had been told by other Coms staff that their status page was listing details of the fault and its resolution; she'd chase this up. I also told her that it would be a good idea to use their Twitter account to give information on outages and resolutions. She agreed. Naturally, nothing's been done about that, either.

It took me three attempts to log the fault with Coms. I rang their 0330 300 9000 number, only to get told (each time) that I had called the wrong number, and that I should ring... 0330 300 9000. Which I had. "Oh, I don't know why your call has been routed here." On the two previous occasions when I attempted to leave my contact details and details of the fault, the call dropped. It happened both when I called from mobile and from landline, so it appears that their call handling is up the spout as well.

I finally stayed on the line for long enough on the third attempt to leave my details. She couldn't understand the nature of the fault, but transcribed what I said, and that looking at Twitter and various forums, I wasn't the only one, and that it appeared to be the same faut as yesterday. She said all she could do is pass this through to "head office" and that someone will call me back. I don't hold out any hope that this will be looked at until their techs arrive on Monday morning.

I'd switch to another ISP if it wasn't for the fact that I have a /29 with Coms, and I'm loath to surrender those.

She couldn't understand the nature of the fault, but transcribed what I said, and that looking at Twitter and various forums, I wasn't the only one, and that it appeared to be the same faut as yesterday.

Got any links to other forum/twitter posts? Cant seem to find much other than this forum about the issues

Oh and to add, other than a 20 min period around 9:50 im online now

Edited by bobble_bob (Sat 29-Nov-14 12:15:15)

Bob - just do a search on @comsplc on Twitter. There are a handful of people commenting

Mines been down since early hours Friday morning. Nothing since then at all. Something is seriously wrong with my connection though. Placed ticket at 07:37 Friday & no one has even it checked it by today. rang them yesterday & after much phone frolics got through. The 9001 number goes to some blokes desk who denied all knowledge of Comms.com!!
Rang the 9001 number, they said would "check the line". Result was "its fine, just the outage. Will come back later. Just leave router off for awhile then turn it on." did that as well as trying 4 different filters & 2 routers. All the same, no connection. Fails to obtain IP address from their end after CHAP authentication fails.
Rang coms again, they said master socket fault tell BT. Rang BT, line is ok as phone is working & that was plugged into Test socket or faceplate.
4pm Friday, ring coms again. Nice lady takes details, gives me reference number & promises a call back in 20mins. Yeah, right. Ring today, tell em all the details again, transfered to right dept, on hold then disconnected.
Ring back, go through the "its an ADSL24 problem, rung the wrong number, no i haven't blah blah take details, ring back blah."
Try again, ring the number, tell them its an ADSL24 problem & its a "you need to ring the 9000 number", hmm been here before me thinks. Takes details again and at this point im told that ADSL24 users have a different support desk number to ring. Hmmm, never been told that. Says that information will be passed onto higher authority and expect a calll Monday! So no broadband this weekend. Muppets, total and utter Muppets. I askedif ill get these 3 days back out of my charges.
Part of me is wondering, is it just ex-ADSL24 users who have suffered the outage or is that just being paranoid. Either way, once its sorted getting MAC then jumping ship asap.

I moved from Coms to Xilo and the first ticket I raised with them was answered in 1 Minute 20 Seconds!

Something has changed as I am downloading much faster than usual, currently 1.74mbps and best ever on ADSL24 was 1.6mbps. This is over usenet and using newsleecher.

Yea i can download at full speeds atm. The outage broke the traffic management system?

Lets hope it stays broken if thats the case. I noticed my snr has been changed from 12 to 3 in my router.

Mines stayed on 9db. Were on removed from the Traffic Management system by PaulComs at the time?

Anyone else gwt a disconnection just after midnight? Only a few mins long

I seem to have had one at 12:07 am.

In reply to a post by KOR_71:

I seem to have had one at 12:07 am.

Went down at 12:04 and a few retries later it was back up at 12:07

Seems to be the same problem as the disconnections at the weekend, namely CHAP authentication failed

I don't think it's possible to get to anyone at Coms who would understand if you called them so just wait and see I guess.

---


Dec 01 00:04:44 daemon pppd[13512]: Connection terminated.
Dec 01 00:04:48 daemon pppd[14149]: PPP: Start to connect ...
Dec 01 00:05:38 daemon pppd[14149]: CHAP authentication failed
Dec 01 00:05:38 daemon pppd[14149]: User name and password authentication failed.
Dec 01 00:05:38 daemon pppd[14149]: Connection terminated.
Dec 01 00:05:41 daemon pppd[14149]: PPP: Start to connect ...
Dec 01 00:05:50 daemon pppd[14149]: LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests
Dec 01 00:05:50 daemon pppd[14149]: Connection terminated.
Dec 01 00:05:53 daemon pppd[14149]: PPP: Start to connect ...
Dec 01 00:06:02 daemon pppd[14149]: LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests
Dec 01 00:06:02 daemon pppd[14149]: Connection terminated.
Dec 01 00:06:05 daemon pppd[14149]: PPP: Start to connect ...
Dec 01 00:06:51 daemon pppd[14149]: Remote message: CHAP authentication failure, unit 19883
Dec 01 00:06:51 daemon pppd[14149]: CHAP authentication failed
Dec 01 00:06:51 daemon pppd[14149]: User name and password authentication failed.
Dec 01 00:06:51 daemon pppd[14149]: Connection terminated.
Dec 01 00:06:54 daemon pppd[14149]: PPP: Start to connect ...
Dec 01 00:07:03 daemon pppd[14149]: Connection terminated.
Dec 01 00:07:06 daemon pppd[14149]: PPP: Start to connect ...
Dec 01 00:07:09 daemon pppd[14149]: Received valid IP address from server. Connection UP.

Anyone's connection running abit slow over http? Xbox speed tests are fine, just http is slow

Same here, http is much slower than usual.

Yours intermittent? Seems fine one min, they half speeds the next. Usenet (before TM kicked in at 6pm) was fine, so was gaming and streaming like i said.

Yeah my speeds are up and down, no consistent speed over http port 80, everything else seems normal.

Seems to be ok now, has been for abit

Not sure how you can get poor speeds over 1 port and rest fine, but i dont know enough about it

I thought things were feeling a bit sluggish just now so I tried a speedtest and got 0.7Mb/s down

My Sync is still the same at 6225 kbps

Speedtest never the best way to test speeds when the TM is active, as it can treat the tests as p2p so throttle them.

Doing an HTTP download is best from a server you know is reliable. Mine is up and down

OK fair enough, I just tried a 50MB test file on port 80 here on TB, download speed ranged from 12kB/sec to 25kB/sec with an estimated time of 30 - 45 mins so something is badly wrong somewhere!

Usually speed issues are always linked to an Enta issue, but nothing on there page.

Anyway once xmas is over im off to Xilo

I don't blame you Bob, I'm surprised you've stayed with COMS as long as you have.

To be honest up until being removed from the traffic management system in late Sept its been fine, but since then browsing has slowed because of being back on it

What i find most ironic is how a communication company that specialise in VOIP and internet based telephone systems, effectively block Xbox Live Chat because its classed as p2p.

Were you on partial LLU (phone seperate provide to broadband)? And if so was it a smooth migration

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 03-Dec-14 22:02:10)

Yes I only had my broadband with COMS. I'm with BT for my phine

I migrated to BT Infinity 2 in May and everything went smoothly. I moved over to BT with an open mind and tried to ignore the many bad comments about them. I've had a great connection since then, always around 75 mb/s down and 18.5 mb/s up. I've not had to use their CS yet fingers crossed.

Another short disconnect around 8:55, guessing same CHAPS issue? Seems the servers do throw a wobbler every few days

Same here, though it was at 20:50. I rang the *9000 number, who took my details, but was told she wasn't (and couldn't) log the fault. I would have to ring again at 09:00 to log the fault. So if a fault happens after 5:30 on a Friday, you're stuffed until 9am on the Monday. Nobody at Coms is willing to log a fault or investigate it until then. Ridiculous.

9001 should be working. I know it says 8-8pm opening hours, but ive rung at 9pm before and got through, with an "engineer" ringing me back shortly after

[Internet disconnected] Thursday, Dec 04,2014 20:52:25

Mine was at 8:52 looking now. Not too fussed, im out of here once xmas is out of the way

Seems it isn't localised and it happens to everyone at the same time, though it comes back up again pretty quick.

Dec 04 20:51:19 daemon pppd[14149]: Clear IP addresses. Connection DOWN.

then

Dec 04 20:51:33 daemon pppd[15177]: Received valid IP address from server. Connection UP.

Give or take a few mins, maybe its different for each router or the time isnt synced correctly, but mine was a little later and lasted just over a minute

Just got an email from coms asking if I want broadband (the irony) and they claim they offer 24/7 support

Surely that ASA would have something to say about that? Even the "my account" area says closed weekends and after 8pm through the week

I had one of those last month, and I ditched them last may. Cannot understand why anyone ( who uses this forum) is still with them.

I will be going soon. Probably would have gone sooner but 1) being taken off traffic management meant i didnt have to deal with alot of the problems until i was put back on it and 2) had some personal stuff going on which meant it wasnt at the top of my list of things to do

Edit: Was at my end not coms for a change

Edited by bobble_bob (Mon 22-Dec-14 14:48:37)

Connection died for anyone again?

Yep, PPP is down (sync still up) and has not reconnected as it usually does when we get these disconnections

I had 5 services with COMS Plc.

Support tickets go unanswered and they are still billing and direct debiting my account for services that ceased last year.

I am very pleased with Zen with a noticeably improved ping, latency and throughput metrics.

Disconnections happening again at the moment, however sync stays up as always

Every single time the connection drops I call their support line immediately (0330 300 9000) I used to just leave it and wait for it to come back up, but I'm bored of that now... only once has someone answered. I called tonight after it going down again (yawn) to see what the problem is with it happening repeatedly and to eventually get my MAC code but after 30 minutes of calling again there was no answer. Any idea if I can email them to get my code? Don't plan on staying with them through the next billing phase.

Try raising a ticket at http://myaccount.coms.com/myaccount/tickets/
Poor show that you can't get through to someone on the phone.

In reply to a post by Gari:

Try raising a ticket at http://myaccount.coms.com/myaccount/tickets/
Poor show that you can't get through to someone on the phone.

I second that, I left COMS in May and raised a ticket requesting my MAC.
It was emailed to me 2 hours later.
Guess they were as sick of me as I was with them

Was out last night on just noticed after looking at my logs. Seems there were outages of 15 mins or so?

Seems therere CHAPs server just throws a wobbly

Edited by bobble_bob (Sun 11-Jan-15 08:03:39)

Coms close on a weekend they never answer

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Was out last night on just noticed after looking at my logs. Seems there were outages of 15 mins or so?

Seems therere CHAPs server just throws a wobbly

Two disconnections I think, one was only a couple of mins or so but the second was for 10-15 mins. My router log shows a long repetitive list of....

Jan 10 19:30:02 daemon pppd[25659]: PPP: Start to connect ...
Jan 10 19:30:02 daemon pppd[25659]: Using interface ppp0_0_38_1
Jan 10 19:30:02 daemon pppd[25659]: Connect: ppp_0_0_38_1 <-->
Jan 10 19:30:02 daemon pppd[25659]: Couldn't increase MTU to 1500.
Jan 10 19:30:11 daemon pppd[25659]: LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests
Jan 10 19:30:11 daemon pppd[25659]: Connection terminated.

.... and repeat

My logs show this

---

10 Jan 2015 19:52

10 Jan 2015 19:36
10 Jan 2015 19:36
39 secs

8 Jan 2015 19:24
10 Jan 2015 19:21

188.81 MB

I rebooted the router on the 8th, but seems i was disconnected for 30 mins minus a 39 second connect

Regional TTB core network issue..

This incident was raised following the identification that wholesale business customers routing through Harbour exchange were experiencing a total loss of service. Following network monitoring completed by our NOC, service alarms were identified at the Brentford data centre subsequently causing a total loss of service for impacted customers. Following investigations completed by our NOC and TTT Network Support, it was found that card 7 on a Network Core Router at the Brentford Data Centre (NCR002.BRE) had failed. This subsequently caused one of the links into the router from Harbour exchange to fail. Further in depth investigations were completed by Network Support and a field engineer at the Brentford site identified that the failed card was an older version and no spare cards of this type were available. To restore full service the field engineer physically migrated ports onto card 10 and a configuration change was completed by our Network Support engineers. This incident is now resolved and will be closed. Network Support will also log the underlying card issue with the supplier Imtech in order for a replacement card to be delivered and installed.

Matt

Is this something Xilo customers have been experiencing too? Its been off and in since November for coms customers with chaps authentication errors but sync remains up.

You say regional but seems all coms customers are effected when it happens

This appears to have been a one-off event but affected many people both direct and indirect that traversed via Harbour ex or their regional DC.

Matt

Thank you very much Matt for the detailed explanation - nice to know that the problem has been identified.

Gari - Did your router logs suggest the issues was different the other day compared to the other times its gone down (like on the 2nd?). If this was a 1 off event, it may not be the same issue as the CHAPs errors/downtime we have been getting

Bob, you're right .... the last outage gave a different error than the others ... on the weekend it was

LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests

...but usually it's something to do with CHAP authentication.

I see where you're coming from with this - we might still get those disconnections that we've been having which are potentially a separate issue.

Can you remember if the ones on the 2nd were CHAPs errors or something else?

99% sure it was to do with CHAP authentication, (as usual) ... I think I PMd you about it on the day.

Yea just remembered you PM'd me, said you thought it was CHAPs.

Guess we can let Coms off for the weekend outage, its just the rest thats their fault