NEWS
BT has confirmed that some of its broadband customers - both wholesale and retail - suffered outages for several hours last night.
The telco said the glitches, which affected users between 16:30(GMT) and 19:30(GMT), were due to a software problem linked to user authentication.
Three servers were the cause of the problem, which impacted users randomly around the country, according to BT.
A BT spokeswoman said the outages resulted from increased congestion on the network which prevented fresh users logging on, although those already connected via BT's broadband network will have experienced no interruptions to their service.
BT wouldn't provide details of which of its retail customers were affected as a result, although AOL, Virgin, Wanadoo and Zen all confirmed they had been hit by outages.
Although none were immediately able to provide precise information on how many end users experienced problems, a Zen spokesman described the outages as "short-term but significant" and a spokesman for Wanadoo said most ISPs had been touched by the problems at BT.
AOL, however, estimates that the number of its users who may have experienced problems with their internet connectivity could be up to 100,000. "It's a pretty busy time of the day," a spokesman for AOL said.
BT's spokeswoman said that the telco has launched a "full investigation" into the problem.
Comments
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1. anonymous
This problem was made worse by an apparent breakdown in BT's support systems. Having called a number of times to report the fault and having to navigate through the maze of Press 1 for this and Press 2 for that... each time the call terminated before I got to talk to someone. Very frustrating - even a recorded message to say there was a fault would have been better.
2. Anonymous
The worst aspect of this outage was BT's denial of the severity of the problem on it own service website "http://www.btbroadbandoffice.com/" which throught showed the status as green and affecting only one area of the country. As a result I spent 40 mins attempting to connect to the helpdesk only to be told it was a network wide issue. 3/10 BT! If you have a problem you have a duty to correctly inform your user base.
3. Peter Hope
For Me random outages of 1 to 10minutes are a daily occurance and have got worse since BT increased my speed to 2 Mbit/s. I am just over 3 km from the local exchange and used to get problems with ISDN drop outs when I used that service. I have been thinking of subscribing to BT fusion but I just don't think the broadband is relaible enough for VoIP.
4. anonymous
Our ADSL wobbled on Monday, Died on Tuesday and Oh it's still dead now.
The ISP say's it's all BT's fault and they could take days to get it sorted (something to do with it being BT Wholesale now running the ADSL).
5. Peter McManus
Every evening recently there has been a disconnection, followed by rejection when trying to reconnect - I surmised it was traffic-related, which BT now seems to confirm. Total connection hours lost in the region of 20-30, plus time wasted. Any hope of recompense from BT? Dream on!
6. David Hudson
There was information regarding BT Broadband outages from the BT Yahoo direct service status number 08001690199. This information was available from at least 6.00 pm on Wednesday, all you needed to do was dial it.
7. anonymous
BT's systems seem permanently flaky. Most home users lose connections everyfew days and the office line sometimes goes out for sevral hours. BT don't acknowledge any specific problem but there is usually some sort of vaguely worded issue on the service status web page. After I complained it got much better for a while.
Does anyone else see large blocks of DNS server failures from SMTPSVC in their Exchange server's error log? Sometimes the BT DNS servers seem to be out for hours on end, especially at night. Lose DNS and your internet is effectively dead.
8. John G Schofield
I spent 40 minutes on the Wanadoo help line (at national rates) trying to sort out the problem.
A pity no-one told the young lady who had me uninstalling and installing drivers, etc, that the problem was nationwide!
9. James Button
It's simple - Once logged on, don't logoff
That way, the suppliers will have to do something to ensure there are enough access links into the system to PROPERLY service all their customers
10. James Button
To Anonymous of Farnham - It ain't an 'enforceable' Legal duty, just a moral one.
I expected an IT director to have sufficient experience in the 'regulated' - 'big' business world of companies such as BT so that their the expectations would have been downgraded to relate to the difference.