Is Zen going to stablise now?

After all the various Zen and BT issues this week, it has been a frankly appauling week for reliability and uptime, and I've had nothing but trobule with lots of circuits (directly managed and others).

While we can't ever account for BT (who can?), is Zen going to leave things alone now so we can have reliable service? It comes to something when TalkTalk have offered a better service all week.

In reply to a post by therioman:

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

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

Things do seem to have been a bit dodgy this week - but I'm putting it down to BT.

It looks like I was moved RAS last Sunday, which is not funny, look how much my latency has increased : http://i53.tinypic.com/28mfwnq.png

As a side note, my neighbours talktalk connection was out ALL DAY yesterday due to the BT nationwide outage it seems, so much for 20 minutes or whatever was stated...

Edited by Pipexer (Sat 22-Oct-11 15:10:35)

+1

Absolutely no issues here.

I lost service for about 30mins at the start of BT's 21CN Stepney Green problem; otherwise it's been another completely normal uneventful week.

Paul

My connection was out most of yesterday.

Really hoping Zen will consider taking on an LLU supplier such as BE Wholesale so customers can choose where available as the BT outages and subsequent hostlink rebalancing are becoming ever more frequent but then again BT build their network from the cheapest kit they can obtain so its not really a surprise.

Or maybe Zen would consider unbundling some exhcnages down south?

BT are really letting a company that procides a terrific service down.

BT need to get their act together. 8Mbps is rapidly becoming a pathetic speed in the times where households are having 2-3 users constantly browsing the internet or doing internet gaming. The thought of being on 8Mbps for the next 4 years is a rather depressing thought.

As usual UK slipping behind when in many respects we are in a better position than other countries to get faster broadband speeds.

It would be nice to know how many customers an ISP needs to break even on unbundling an exchange, I'd be happy to try and convince locals into choosing a Zen if we could get enough to make LLU viable.

Sorry folks just a Saturday night grumble.

Edited by Pipexer (Sat 22-Oct-11 19:20:28)

+1 for no problems, although still on 20CN and probably will be til 2014.

20CN is beating 21CN hands down in terms of reliability so you guys still on it don't know how lucky you are (currently on the ADSL Max product delivered over a 21CN exchange)

BT couldn't organise a booze up in brewery so I'd not hold your breath.

Had it not been for Zen's excellent service I might have followed others and gone LLU sometime ago.

I really hope Zen do something so that they can circumvent BT as after yesterday I am currently looking at providers that use BE or C&W backhaul circuits.

This was down to a BT fault and not much Zen can do about it. I had over a day of problems but as soon as BT fixed their issue all back to normal.

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.

In reply to a post by mixt:

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.

It's worth pointing out that according to a statement on iDNetters, iDNet are starting to provide a service via Telefonica wholesale (aka BE). AFAICT this service is only in testing at present but it might be worth a look.

Edited by Tacitus (Sun 23-Oct-11 20:39:23)

In reply to a post by mixt:

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 never said that it was absolutely end of the earth critical. But clearing up lots of circuits that just don't work anymore and cannot authenticate again after many hours DOES cause major issues, especially when you cannot get updates from the ISP because its own phone system is down... Yes Zen, I'm looking at you.

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.

Actually if you knew that much, you'd also know that leased lines and other similar technologies are generaly delivered over very similar infrastructure and go down. Ask AAISP what happened to its ethernet circuits last week when BT lost the DSL, that's right, the ethernet stuff died too.

That digger goes right through the lines, and goodbye leased line. Same infrastructure. The exchange my DSL is in and my Leased Line loses power (happened recently), both dead. All that extra money, same outcome.

In real terms having extensively tested this, I can get the same overall level of reliability by having 2 or 3 DSL Lines from different ISPs as I can by having a LL + DSL backup. Excep I save a lot of money.

Unless we start talking about true diverse Leased Lines (and often they're not as truely diverse as you believe - I've seen them have common points of failure too)

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.

It is in the spirit of the service offered that reasonable competence will be used. Killing lines just before the end of the working week to do rebalancing is not the best plan. Having a phone service for support as an ISP that died is pretty poor too. No resiliance by Zen there. Wouldn't matter if I did have a Leased Line from them, I'd STILL have been unable to reach them for support. Great stuff.

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.

Funnily enough I moved many lines away from Zen 2-3 years ago. I do this as a matter of routine, but not every organisation has the money for lots of lines, and although not critical, reading a status page saying issues are resolved, then finding it is far from resolved and even a 20 minute turn it off and on again session leaves lines dead for another hour is just not acceptable - it is massively misleading and could have been avoided.

Plus, most of the reason these load balancing efforts lead to lines dying and failing to come back live with BTs Radius system and how it handles session reconnects - Zen should (as should other ISPs) be hassling BT on this since the way it handles this scenario is substandard and since 21CN comes up fairly regularly as a problem.

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.

It isn't always about money lost.

It is your problem though.

No, it is Zens problem. Right now I pay the money to them. If I choose to spend money with someone else it does cease to be Zens issue, but right now it is down to Zen. You're side stepping the responsibility.

[quote[
For me, it seems A&A provide the best service they can given the flaws of the infrastructure they have to work with.
[/quote]

Actually I'd disagree from personal experience. As much as I like Adrian and co, I don't think A&A offers the best service they can.

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.

Thanks for the lesson - but seriously, read my historical posts, I do point out if you want to have a "guarantee" you need LLs etc (but this is not the same as reality - an SLA can say anything, but it doesn't make it happen, and provides pretty poor compensation when it doesn't. An SLA is for the most part a box ticking exercise.

As I say, I have significant experience in this field, and have successfully resolved some customers long term reliability issues by moving them AWAY from Leased Lines some times - not because they couldn't afford it, but the service wasn't actually offering any enhanced reliability over DSL - by running them side by side for 6 months, I proved it. They moved to our Dual DSL service and since then I've never heard from them on support. It just works.

My issues are not ultimately with the "mission critical" debate, it is that:

(a) Zen made poor decisions to load balance when they did

(b) This was doubly poor knowing LB's cause stale sessions to happen every single time, and know it leads to death of connection for extended periods. The 20 minute claim is nonsense. All our circuits came back at EXACTLY the same time - that's not symptomatic of a BT stale session issue

(c) Zen's phone service disappeared so you couldn't get through. Bad lack of resiliance there on Zen's part and makes you wonder if in fact the issues are related.

As for an SLA, actually there is an implied SLA of sorts - anyone providing services is obliged to provide the service with reasonable competence and skill (a pretty common and well accepted legal term). That is what I expect. I'm not talking about stupid percentage figures and complicaetd documents full of get out clauses.

On a lighter note, my favourite SLA was one that excluded any sort of failure caused by a third party in any way. When I pointed out that this meant pretty much everything was excluded from the SLA, they didn't get it. Took us a lot of effort to get them to remove this clause. We had to remind them that we have no influence over the choice of suppliers they use, and that the way it had been worded meant absolutely everything was a third party clause. They clearly knew this and hadn't ever paid out on the SLA and nobody had bothered to read the SLA properly. That's why they're basically worthless.

Some very informative rebuttals there - thanks for that! I don't agree with everything you've said, but you raise some valid points which are food for thought.

I never have liked BT's authentication system, radius, PPP sessions, etc. I've seen the problems that framework causes having worked some years ago in a small ISP up in Scotland. Seems the underlying issues still haven't really been addressed 10 years forward, when BT have outages like the recent one. I guess this is why I have the pessimistic view I do about broadband that uses BT infrastructure, and why my general attitude on here is - put up with it, or move on. Cause it's clear it hasn't improved over the last decade (and according to some, 21CN is worse than 20CN!).

Regarding leased lines etc, I'm sure these other more expensive 'circuits' have to be, on the whole, more reliable than base broadband, otherwise why would they cost so much more? And an SLA does mean something, at least in places I have worked in. I do agree with you that if there is a clause which blankets 3rd party outages, then that's just ridiculous (and that's good you flagged this up). I see SLAs as a legal incentive to provide a reliable service. They tend to exist if the loss of service would mean loss of money (so said company compensates you for the outage, or has a guarantee to fix it within a reasonable time frame). Very much a legal thing, and something that should be ridiculed in depth before any SLA agreement is signed between two parties. As for diggers, and 'acts of God', that's just life. Maybe such companies should employ more competent digger operators, who maybe realise the implications of their actions when operating such powerful machinery!

Anyway, not much more to say - so I'll stop now.

In reply to a post by mixt:

put up with it, or move on. Cause it's clear it hasn't improved over the last decade (and according to some, 21CN is worse than 20CN!).

(a) 21CN has been much worse than 20CN for reliability. Without a doubt.

(b) You haven't always got a choice of alternatives to BT 21CN service.

(c) Regarding leased lines etc, I'm sure these other more expensive 'circuits' have to be, on the whole, more reliable than base broadband, otherwise why would they cost so much more?

Mostly historical - it used to be the only option. It remained high. Ask any ISP and they would tell you (if they weren't playing the commercially sensitive game) that they make a LOT more from selling you a 2MB Leased Line over a 2MB SDSL or ADSL.

And an SLA does mean something, at least in places I have worked in

Does it mean when your line fails for a working day and you lose a genuine amount of business, say £10K you get anything like that back? No, at best you would normally get a % of the monthly fee paid, and if you're really lucky, you get a months rental back. Has no bearing on the cost of the failure, and ultimately thus doesn't help you much.

I see SLAs as a legal incentive to provide a reliable service. They tend to exist if the loss of service would mean loss of money (so said company compensates you for the outage, or has a guarantee to fix it within a reasonable time frame).

I see them more as an agreement on what level of service the provider is aiming to achieve. Chances are they'll have it set it just under the real state so as to rarely, or never breach it. It really just sets out a basic understanding and normally a token compensation, but rarely has any other significant impact.

Post deleted by techguy

In reply to a post by therioman:

(a) Zen made poor decisions to load balance when they did

(b) This was doubly poor knowing LB's cause stale sessions to happen every single time, and know it leads to death of connection for extended periods. The 20 minute claim is nonsense. All our circuits came back at EXACTLY the same time - that's not symptomatic of a BT stale session issue

(c) Zen's phone service disappeared so you couldn't get through. Bad lack of resiliance there on Zen's part and makes you wonder if in fact the issues are related.

With respect, my understanding is that BT;s infrastructure is pretty dumb and does not evenly distribute traffic over the service provider's links. (something I'd have thought it being a 21st century network they'd have thought about)

I took the day off work to study for a Microsoft server course I was doing and I was rather annoyed that my connection was down pretty much all day.

However, I'd imagine that the decision was taken to do the load balancing immediately because a large amount of PPP sessions ended up routed over one connection meaning all connections would perform poorly which I'm sure you would have had an issue with?

So the question has to be, what would you have done?

In reply to a post by techguy:

So the question has to be, what would you have done?

Pretty simple, I'd rather slower speeds than no access at all. As it was the load balancing caused an outage far longer than Zen stated on Service Status AND left me with lots of totally dead lines for well over an hour.

What caused an hour of 'dead lines' ? Was it the BT outage? (which for me, only lasted 20 mins) or was it Zen performing the load balancing after the BT outage? What is happening for lines to remain 'dead' for hours? Is it the fact routers land up with one of the 172.* IP addresses from BT, think they are connected, and so don't log back in?

Genuine question, no trolling intended.

In reply to a post by therioman:

In reply to a post by techguy:

So the question has to be, what would you have done?

Pretty simple, I'd rather slower speeds than no access at all. As it was the load balancing caused an outage far longer than Zen stated on Service Status AND left me with lots of totally dead lines for well over an hour.

Personally I'd agree with you and so would a proportion of others I'm sure but there would be an equally large proportion that would hit the phones and forums complaining about the slow speed and wouldn't take 'we're going to rebalance traffic across the links overnight' as an answer as there were probably some business customers trying to pull down large files etc.

Also it being Friday a lot of home customers would also complain.

I think they were in a no win situation TBH, whatever they decided to do would have drawn fire from a section of customers.

It does demonstrate how bad the BT system design is though that it requires operations staff at an ISP to spend hours manually kicking off PPP sessions and monitoring reconnections (which from the behaviour of my router and what I've read elsewhere is what I understand they have to do until the connection reroutes over another link) until they have an equal number of connections running across each hostlink.

Even if BT won't allow ISPs to specify which link a conection comes in over it should be possible for BT's own network operations staff to do it (without charge) following an incident or on requiest of an ISP..

Wake up Ofcom and put the national infrastructure into the hands of a company mutually owned by all service providers that is a non profit and can run it properly and not just to line the pockets of BT shareholders and Directors.

Edited by techguy (Fri 28-Oct-11 01:02:20)

In reply to a post by techguy:

Personally I'd agree with you and so would a proportion of others I'm sure but there would be an equally large proportion that would hit the phones and forums complaining about the slow speed and wouldn't take 'we're going to rebalance traffic across the links overnight' as an answer as there were probably some business customers trying to pull down large files etc.

But the solution there would be disconnect/reconnect - it would "load balance" them (that's what hapens anyhow AFAIK in essense) - except it would be clean and not leave a long period of downtime if the session gets stuck.

I think they were in a no win situation TBH, whatever they decided to do would have drawn fire from a section of customers.

Yeah sure, I know you can't please everyone all the time, but Zen is supposedly a premium brand and premium service, the least impacting way would be the one I suggested.

It does demonstrate how bad the BT system design is though that it requires operations staff at an ISP to spend hours manually kicking off PPP sessions and monitoring reconnections (which from the behaviour of my router and what I've read elsewhere is what I understand they have to do until the connection reroutes over another link) until they have an equal number of connections running across each hostlink.

Maybe so - but Zen have the power to hassle BT over this, we don't. They're BTs customer and they had plenty of time to eval this, and put in requests for

As I say I don't think its as simple as a disconnect reconnect because BT routing is a law unto itself from what I've read.

While ISPs can and do hassle BT over individual customer issues I don't think they have the influence on BT to change their business processes or network unless they all band together and threaten to switch to a different supplier, this cannot happen until LLU becomes as ubiquitous as BT so for the moment BT can adopt a take it or leave attitude because no ISP can really afford to exclude customers on BT only exchanges.

In reply to a post by mixt:

What caused an hour of 'dead lines' ? Was it the BT outage? (which for me, only lasted 20 mins) or was it Zen performing the load balancing after the BT outage? What is happening for lines to remain 'dead' for hours? Is it the fact routers land up with one of the 172.* IP addresses from BT, think they are connected, and so don't log back in?

Zen's Load Balancing.

Basically leaves the sessions stuck. Even full power cycling a router doesn't fix it (so it's not the stupid BT auto-assign 172x stuff (although I hear rumour it is only supposed to keep that session for 15 minutes)

You power cycle, sync comes up, PPP refused.
OR
PPP accepted, but then dropped shortly after before any packets are transmitted.

Stale sessions would occur no matter when the load balancing was done, due to a BT issue.

Ahh yes, I think I know what you mean now (I remember something similar from when I worked at a small ISP up north).

Basically, the routers keep trying to reconnect (in the case of PPP sessions which connect, but then drop) or, in the case of being assigned a 172.* address, BT's systems will then drop the connection again after 15 or so minutes (I have also been told this) forcing the router to reconnect to hopefully login correctly.

But, if the actual session becomes stale, the router can attempt reconnection again, and again, and again, for up to something like 20 or so minutes, before it then clears within the BT system, and then things return to normal. I suspect this is what you are talking about, right? Stale sessions within the BT network itself. We were always told that leaving the modem off would clear stale sessions after 20 mins. But what we usually did was call some special BT support number, give them the broadband/land line number, and they would clear the stale session for us. Either way, a right royal PITA to be honest.

I agree, it's all a bit of a farce to say the least. I don't think I've yet to experience a stale session (have they resolved them on 21CN? Is it still mostly a 20CN problem?), but the way my Linux router behaves, it basically aims to keep the PPP session up, continuously. If it drops, it will attempt reconnection. If it times out, it will drop, and attempt reconnection again. If it connects, and gets a 172.* address (I check this every minute via a crontab), it drops, and reconnects again. It basically does everything it can to bring the link back up, checking that it is connected to A&A as expected.

I guess other off the shelf routers aren't as smart as this, and I appreciate how this can create the issues you describe. I can't offer any advice other than - my take on it all is as I've stated before: BT is the lowest of the low, it is the broadband infrastructure for the masses. I do genuinely expect it to be below par (or for what of a better word, s**t) compared to other offerings from other providers (like LLU etc). But I can live with the outages and PEWs (which are rare, or performed at night). But I guess other's can't, and that's understandable if you are a business where your only option is BT based connection, with 20CN being an even worse deal!

In reply to a post by techguy:

Stale sessions would occur no matter when the load balancing was done, due to a BT issue.

Yes, thanks for stating the obvious (seriously, I KNOW this)

The issue isn't the problem Zen can't control, so much as knowing it happens and choosing WHEN more carefully to minimise the real impact.

Other ISPs do something about this. See AAISP.

In reply to a post by mixt:

But, if the actual session becomes stale, the router can attempt reconnection again, and again, and again, for up to something like 20 or so minutes, before it then clears within the BT system, and then things return to normal. I suspect this is what you are talking about, right? Stale sessions within the BT network itself. We were always told that leaving the modem off would clear stale sessions after 20 mins.

Nothing changed there, still the same, although it STILL doesn't always clear it even then.

Plus, as I said before, that all lines came back at the same time tells me that the true issue was elsewhere (I've been told it was Stale Session but I don't agree frankly). I still vote Zen had some other undisclosed issue too, given they also lost phones, but nobody wants to mention it.

I agree, it's all a bit of a farce to say the least. I don't think I've yet to experience a stale session (have they resolved them on 21CN? Is it still mostly a 20CN problem?),

No, still the same old.

I guess other off the shelf routers aren't as smart as this,

It's not a matter of being smart is it - although we're veering off the original issue, BT shouldn't be giving these valid PPP sessions and IPs - they should just refuse the PPP session, but apparently it makes more sense (to them) to stop the reconnect attempts by simply giving a useless session instead.

BT is the lowest of the low, it is the broadband infrastructure for the masses. I do genuinely expect it to be below par (or for what of a better word, s**t) compared to other offerings from other providers (like LLU etc).

Except in coverage, where only BT services are available almost universally. Everyone else plays the only the most profitable game and doesn't play the "overall revenue/profitability" game.

with 20CN being an even worse deal!

Actually I'll have 20CN back if you don't mind. It works, it almost always worked, and if it did go wrong, it was relatively easy to sort (and ISPs had a bit more control). Under 21CN it often breaks, ISPs get forced into situations where they cannot have as much redundancy against relatively common issues and we all suffer. All to have supposedly better speed.

In reply to a post by techguy:

While ISPs can and do hassle BT over individual customer issues I don't think they have the influence on BT to change their business processes or network unless they all band together and threaten to switch to a different supplier, this cannot happen until LLU becomes as ubiquitous as BT so for the moment BT can adopt a take it or leave attitude because no ISP can really afford to exclude customers on BT only exchanges.

I think ISPs could do a lot more, but the problem is that everyone went for a rush to the bottom (for cost to consumer) which now means that there is sod all margin and everyone plays the frankly nonsensical card of "ah well it is cheap and you need a leased line" thing.

If we were all still paying more per month, the overall pool of money would be better and more redundancy and such could have been afforded. The desire for paying sod all has taken away the sensible margins.

In reply to a post by therioman:

given they also lost phones, but nobody wants to mention it.

We didn't lose 'phones. All lines were busy due to the volume of customers calling about the problems being experienced, hence customers hearing the engaged tone when they attempted to reach us. Unfortunately that was unavoidable as customers were attempting to get through on multiple different numbers and teams.

regards,
Phil.

Hi Phil,

Um, no you did lose your phones, your status said so.

And I certainly couldn't even get engaged (otherwise I could have left it redialling), the numbers were NU.

Can you point me to the status message please?

I can only find this one which states callers were hearing the engaged tone and this was due to the volume of calls. Initially it was investigated as a possible fault (first note) but the second states it was due to volume, rather than a fault.

Calls were continuing to enter our queues throughout the issues.

I don't know why an engaged tone wouldn't be heard though.

ta,
Phil.

In reply to a post by SkyFire:

Can you point me to the status message please?

Yes that one I think, but we def did not receive engaged tones, it was a simple NU.