In reply to a post by binary:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I know it is early in the morning, but with more and more devices relaying being online, it is not good. Makes me sometimes wonder if I did make the right choice and should have stayed with FTTC, and this time I am not joking.

I really hope you keep the forum abreast of each and every one of your thoughts on this matter from day to day and hour to hour.

It's all a bit "The [not very] Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ "

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

[Maybe they do but don't tell people, Your provider is being truthful about planned outages which is not a bad thing. My router often has a firmware upgrade and reboot around 2am without any warning.
[/quote]

you could be right, but yes you are right about routers, but if i can I stop them updating until I want them to. My TP-link will tell me there is an update. I don't what Zzoomm's own router will do, not that it is really their own router. It is a Icotera, goodness knows why they those them.

Anyway, got a email from them.

Dear Customer,
As you may be aware, for two evenings earlier this week (Tuesday 29th and Wednesday 30th August) there has been disruption to your internet service on the Zzoomm Network in Hereford. You may have experienced poor download speeds, websites taking longer to load, and streaming services buffering. I’m reaching out to apologise for the inconvenience this has caused, to provide a transparent explanation, and to inform you what we’re doing going forward to prevent future issues.
At around 16:00 on Tuesday 29th August, we received alarms from our network monitoring due to an outage on one of our backhaul links into Hereford (also referred to as major trunk links). We have 2 backhaul links into Hereford (for resilience) and these links connect our Hereford network to the rest of the internet. Since the backhaul links are redundant, an outage on a single backhaul link shouldn’t cause any disruption to service. However, there is a reduction in backhaul capacity (the amount of traffic that can be sent/received) whilst only a single link is in operation.
This reduction in capacity caused the network to congest at peak times (18:00 – 23:30) on both evenings, and as a result of this congestion, internet services will have been disrupted and download speeds reduced significantly. On Wednesday 30th August there was a game update (Call of Duty) and a preload of a new game (Starfield) which saw an exceptional 25% traffic increase for all internet providers,. This unfortunately compounded the congestion issues in Hereford.
The cause of the outage on the backhaul link was a fibre break on a third-party network. This was a major break – it took multiple engineers and civil engineering works to identify and then repair the damage. We got confirmation that the fibre was repaired at 03:30 on Thursday 31st August, and after thorough testing, we brought the backhaul link back into service – restoring resilience and capacity into Hereford.
It’s my role at Zzoomm to ensure our network provides a quality (and speedy) service at all times - on this occasion the network regretfully didn’t perform. However, it is also my role to ensure we continuously improve and prevent repeat issues. So, here is what we’re doing:
We are upgrading the backhaul links into Hereford (increasing the capacity by 10x) to ensure we can provide a congestion free service at all times (even when one link fails). These upgrades have been planned for some time and we expect them to be delivered within the next couple of months.
We’ll be reviewing the outage with our third-party supplier – focusing on the time taken to recover services to identify improvements.
We’re developing an improved mechanism to provide more frequent email updates throughout an outage/service disruption, so that we can keep you informed and up to date.
As a gesture of goodwill, we’ll be applying a £10 credit to your account. This will appear on your next invoice dated after Friday 8th September 2023.

They don't have to give us all a tenner, but good on them for doing so.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

They don't have to give us all a tenner, but good on them for doing so.

They have been transparent about what caused the problem, they are also improving their backhaul links and everyone affected gets £10. Well done Zzoomm.

Edited by PCJM40 (Fri 01-Sep-23 22:19:01)

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

They don't have to give us all a tenner, but good on them for doing so.

They have been transparent about what caused the problem, they are also improving their backhaul links and everyone affected gets £10. Well done Zzoomm.

I agree and at least they know what caused the problem, which is more than Openreach did when my broadband would not sync unless I used an old Huawei modem.

We will see.

I agree and at least they know what caused the problem, which is more than Openreach did when my broadband would not sync unless I used an old Huawei modem

Your comparing a network outage with a 3rd party compatibility issue!
How far will zzooom or any other network operators go to resolve 3rd party problems?

Edited by witchunt (Sat 02-Sep-23 09:15:10)

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I agree and at least they know what caused the problem, which is more than Openreach did when my broadband would not sync unless I used an old Huawei modem.

I agree with witchunt that an issue where your own router is not syncing is different than an issues within a providers backhaul although the Openreach engineers should really have a standard router in their van they can pull out to temporary put on the circuit to prove the problem. I wouldn't say their super-duper test equipment conclusively proves that as they always get better speed readings on it than you can with your router.

In reply to a post by witchunt:

How far will zzooom or any other network operators go to resolve 3rd party problems?

I would guess given they are using an ONT and the demarcation point is Ethernet, much less likely to occur... as it was when OR provided modems, the "wires only" probably caused more engineering pain than it solved politically.

In reply to a post by witchunt:

Your comparing a network outage with a 3rd party compatibility issue!
How far will zzooom or any other network operators go to resolve 3rd party problems?

The original modem that Openreach supplied failed to sync, the only thing that would was a Huawei I borrowed from my next door neighbour as at that time they were using an All-in-one thing from BT. I was using a ECi modem and it was Openreach network that went down as I lost broadband, picked up the phone as I had a normal phone connected and no dial tone and when they got it sorted, nothing would sync apart from the Huawei I borrowed from my next door neighbour. Plusnet sent me their Hub 1 and that did not work either, so I ordered a second hand Huawei router from ebay. Plusnet then sent me a Zyxel router, that worked for a couple of weeks and then failed. Evcen Ipenreach did not have a clue what was happening as their own equipment would not sync in the home and they had problems at the cabinet. So their advice was to keep the Huawei in line. I did, but and connected it to the Wan on the Zyxel.
I still don;lt know when the fault was sorted, all I remember is that a year or so later I thought I would try the zyxel without the modem and it worked. and so did the hub one. the only thing that did not work was my original ECI modem.

Strange fault, but never got anything for it apart from the Zyxel and then that went belly up a few months ago which is why I got bought the TP-link I now use on Zzoomm. I really need to dump these old things, I will keep the Huawei, just in case I do go back to FTTC.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Plusnet sent me their Hub 1 and that did not work either

Openreach should have hung around and resolved the issue, highly likely the Openreach engineer didn't have a clue how to fix it so closed the fault call as 3rd party issue. This is really poor from Openreach.

They could have simply referred back as a network fault, raise an incident and have someone look at the DSLAM cabinet. That's just bread and butter stuff. It was likely a card fault or a firmware update required. As the end user accepted the resolution it went nowhere.