Metronet - Pay As You Go Broadband

Service Status Messages

Date and Time	Notice
13/08/2010 @ 17:04	Increase in 20CN & 21CN (ADSL) Capacity - August 2010 Over recent months we have invested in our broadband network by adding more capacity as customer numbers increase. As we normally announce these capacity changes, we have taken the opportunity to summarise them in a Community Site blog post that can be seen here - http://community.plus.net/blog/2010/08/13/broadband-capacity-update-13th-august-2010/ Kind Regards, Bob Pullen Customer Support
04/01/2010 @ 17:31	Broadband Network Capacity (285660) - RESOLVED This is an update to last month's post about the speed and performance problems some of our customers were experiencing throughout the latter part of last year. A copy of the last announcement can be seen here - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259931139.htm Throughout December our network engineers have managed to complete all of the work we had planned to address the network performance problems some customers were seeing. We've been monitoring the network closely and are now satisfied that service has been restored to normal levels. As such we are taking the decision to change Service Status back to 'Green'. Since the last announcement we have increased the capacity of our edge routers, and upgraded the DNS and load balancing platforms at a second data centre in London. We have yet to introduce additional traffic management switches to the network, however this is only being done to accommodate future demand and not to address the issues from last year. It's worth noting that there were some problems over the festive period that may have led to data transfer problems or network imbalance. These issues were isolated incidents and not directly related to last year's problems. We would like to offer our apologies again for the problems that occurred late last year, any customers still experiencing difficulties are advised to raise a fault with our support centre via the usual channels if they have not already done so. Kind Regards, Bob Pullen Customer Support
04/12/2009 @ 12:52	Broadband Network Capacity (285660) – UPDATE This is an update to last week's post about the ongoing speed and performance problems some of our customers are experiencing when the network is busy, a copy of the last announcement can be seen here - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259095584.htm A summary of the recent problems can also be seen on our website here - http://www.plus.net/support/network_update.shtml The network continues to operate under 'Plan A' operation and performance this week has been much better following the concerted efforts of our network engineers - http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/load.shtml Since the last announcement we have carried out the following work: * Upgraded the line cards used by two of our core routers to reduce low level packet loss when the network becomes busy - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259776555.htm * Changed the 'virtual routing' for a number of customers to reduce congestion during peak times - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259680613.htm * Upgraded two of the load balancers at one of our London data centres to help fix the intermittent DNS problems some customers have been experiencing - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259794367.htm * Installed new software across one of the two sites used for our customer-facing DNS platform and changed the way the platform is load balanced. This is another piece of work that will fix the intermittent DNS problems some customers have been experiencing - * Rolled out new traffic management signatures to improve streaming and more accurately identify traffic from download sites/servers - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259768966.htm * Increased the capacity of the gateways at one of our London data centres. * Rebuilt the gateway known as pcl-ag02. * Lit another 155Mbps segment of central capacity meaning more bandwidth for customers- http://community.plus.net/blog/2009/11/26/plusnet-15-now-fully-lit/ * Migrated a number of customer across to our 21CN network to free up more capacity on the 20CN platform. There have been a few problems: Last Friday we experienced a hardware problem with the gateway known as pcl-ag02 and since this time the device has been out of service - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259322648.htm Despite some initial teething problems we have managed to rebuild this gateway using replacement hardware and will be looking to reintroduce it over the coming weeks as we bring more capacity online. The network was quickly brought back into balance following the problems with pcl-ag02 and remained that way until Thursday when we suffered the brief loss of another 622Mbps central pipe - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259862830.htm This was due to some damaged fibre which was quickly replaced and the network brought back into balance. Yesterday we had a brief data transfer problem which was related to the work to upgrade the load balancers at one of our data centres - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259843295.htm This has since been fixed. The network is now performing much better, especially following all the work that was carried out yesterday. We don't expect any significant problems over the weekend and you should find that things are performing well. We're going to be monitoring things closely, and assuming all is well will be making some more changes over the coming weeks. Once this work is completed, we'll be looking to change Service Status back to 'Green'. * Increase the capacity of the gateways at a second data centre in London. * Make the DNS and load balancer changes at a second data centre in London. * Introduce three extra traffic management switches to the network We would like to offer our apologies again for the problems over recent weeks and will provide another update regarding the work that is yet to be completed next week. Kind Regards, Bob Pullen Customer Support
24/11/2009 @ 20:46	Broadband Network Capacity (285660) - UPDATE This update should be read in context with the post here that explains why some customers may be seeing drastically reduced broadband speeds this evening - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259093450.htm This is an update to last week's post about the ongoing speed and performance problems some of our customers are experiencing when the network is busy, a copy of the last announcement can be seen here - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1258744391.htm A summary of the recent problems can also be seen on our website here - http://www.plus.net/support/network_update.shtml After switching back to 'Plan A' operation on Friday, the performance of the network has in most cases been notably better - http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/load.shtml We will remain under normal 'Plan A' operation until further notice. The network was well balanced over the weekend, however a problem following some maintenance on pcl-ag02 yesterday afternoon spoilt this and took the network back out of balance. This will have caused slow speeds last night for some customers however the network has been brought back into balance today. This morning we made some changes to our traffic management platform aimed at improving the responsiveness of web browsing where images on the site are hosted by the popular Content Distribution Networks, Akamai and Limelight Networks - http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/download_servers.shtml This change has been applied to the following account types and if successful will be introduced across all accounts. Broadband Unlimited Broadband Premier Broadband Premium Broadband Your Way Option 3 Broadband Your Way Option 4 We are continuing to investigate reports from customers who are experiencing what appear to be DNS lookup failures. The symptoms of this will be 'Page can't be displayed' or DNS errors trying to browse to certain websites or servers, which then seem to work fine seconds/minutes later. Whilst things are definitely better now when compared to recent weeks, there is still the potential for your connection to become slower than normal when things get busy. There is further maintenance work and fixes due to be rolled out over the coming weeks: - Upgrade the software used by our 'gateways' to increase stability and minimise the potential for 'pipe drops' - we expect the software to be delivered ready for deployment later this week. - Replace some of the line cards used by our core routers with more modern versions. This will remove some of the low level packet loss that we've been seeing when the network is at its busiest. - Upgrade the load balancers at our London data centres to reduce the risk of DNS timeouts when the network is busy. We haven't had the parts delivered for this yet however we're planning to have the work complete within the next fortnight. - We're scheduled to increase the central bandwidth available on both the 20CN and 21CN networks at some point next week. We appreciate your patience and apologise for the problems over recent weeks. Kind Regards, Bob Pullen Customer Support
20/11/2009 @ 19:13	Broadband Network Capacity (285660) - UPDATE NB: This announcement was posted earlier this evening however one of the links contained in the update was wrong. This is the revised version containing the correct link. This is an update to Wednesday's post about the ongoing speed and performance problems some of our customers are experiencing when the network is busy. Over recent days our network engineers have been re-cabling parts of the network at one of our London data centres. This has made it easier to balance customer traffic across the platform, and has allowed us to perform some maintenance this afternoon on the problematic gateway pcl-ag02 - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1258728887.htm We have now finished this maintenance but no customers were disconnected. This means that we will no longer need to perform any network balancing ahead of the weekend. As things are relatively well balanced already, we have taken the decision to return to a 'Plan A' operation - http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/load.shtml This should result in a noticeable improvement in speeds during the evening. We will remain operating under 'Plan A' over the weekend and will review the situation again on Monday when we will provide another update. There is still the potential for your connection to become slower than normal when things get busy, however we have further maintenance work and fixes that are due to be rolled out over the coming weeks to address these issues. Included in this work are plans to: - Work with our vendors to develop and install a software patch to improve the stability of our edge routers (gateways). - Upgrade the line cards on the edge routers to more modern versions. - Change the 'virtual routing' of more customers to better balance traffic across our core network. - Increase the capacity of the edge routers - Upgrade our load balancers to reduce the potential for occasional DNS lookup failures - Light more central capacity On a related note we published a summary of the recent problems to our website earlier today that you can see here - http://www.plus.net/support/network_update.shtml We would like to apologise again for the problems over recent weeks, and will provide another update on Monday. Kind Regards, Bob Pullen Customer Support