http://www.plus.net/supportpages.html?a=2 RSS Feed of Force9 Service Status Postings 2010-03-10T17:35Z status@servicestatus.plus.com status@servicestatus.plus.com http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1268242395.htm
This 'MBORC' declaration was announced following severe bouts of weather, particularly across areas of Scotland.

We have now received notification that the MBORC has been lifted. A copy of the latest announcement from BT Openreach can be seen below:

"Following heavy snow falls and freezing temperatures in parts of Scotland Openreach declared a matter beyond our reasonable control (MBORC)/force major event effective from 08.00 on 3rd March 2010.

The MBORC has been in place in the following areas

* North East Scotland
* Tayside and Fife
* South East Scotland
* West Central Scotland

We have been closely monitoring the situation in Scotland and we are pleased to announce that due to improving weather conditions, our service has returned to normal and therefore we are able to completely lift the MBORC, with effect from 08.00 on Wednesday 10th March."

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support]]> 2010-03-10T17:33:15Z Other F9-1268242395 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1268240899.htm Tomorrow morning, 11th March.

What does it affect?
The firewalls at one of our Sheffield data centres.

How long will it take?
About thirty minutes.

What does the work involve?
We're increasing the resiliency of one of our firewall clusters.

Am I likely to notice this work?
No, you shouldn't do.

Is there anything else I need to know?
No.

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support]]> 2010-03-10T17:08:19Z Other F9-1268240899 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1268130434.htm This morning.

What does it affect?
Our internal phone system.

How long will it take?
Up to thirty minutes.

What does the work involve?
We'll be increasing the capacity of our phone system so that it's able to handle more concurrent calls. This is a temporary measure whilst we're in the process of testing a new phone system.

Am I likely to notice this work?
No, you shouldn't do.

Is there anything else I need to know?
No.

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support]]> 2010-03-09T10:27:14Z Other F9-1268130434 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1268060594.htm Tomorrow morning, 9th March.

What does it affect?
Email and FTP authentication.

How long will it take?
Up to two hours.

What does the work involve?
We will be making some changes to the code that governs email and FTP authentication.

Am I likely to notice the work?
No, you shouldn't do.

Is there anything else I need to know?
If anything unexpected does happen then it's likely to result in username and/or password errors when trying to send and receive email or connect to our FTP servers.

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support]]> 2010-03-08T15:03:14Z Email F9-1268060594 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1267807406.htm
This work has now been cancelled and will take place at a later date. We will post a revised maintenance announcement once this date has been confirmed.

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support]]> 2010-03-05T16:43:26Z Other F9-1267807406 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1267801926.htm This weekend, starting late Saturday night.

What does it affect?
Faults and ordering systems.

How long will it take?
Up to nine hours.

What does the work involve?
Our suppliers are carrying out maintenance work on some of their backend systems.

Am I likely to notice this work?
Our automated Broadband Fault Checker will be unavailable for the duration of the maintenance window and holding pages will be in place. We will not be able to process any MAC requests during this time.

Is there anything else I need to know?
If you need to raise a fault then we suggest that you avoid contacting us during this maintenance window as we will not have access to all of the necessary systems.

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support]]> 2010-03-05T15:12:06Z Other F9-1267801926 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1267776153.htm
Back in August of last year we switched off SSH and Telnet access to our CGI web servers -
http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1250501303.htm

We will not be restoring shell access to the CGI servers, although we have built an alternative platform running PHP5 that we will be providing more details about shortly.

As there isn't essentially a 'problem' with the CGI platform, we're going to set Service Status back to Green. We will continue to make announcements though regarding the launch of the alternative platform.

Both new and old platforms will run side by side whilst we ascertain what additional work is going to be required before we'd be in a position to retire the current offering.

At launch, only customers with access to the existing CGI platform will be able to access the new one.

We'd like to thank customers for their patience and will post full details about how you can access the new servers in the next update.

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support.]]> 2010-03-05T08:02:33Z CGI Services F9-1267776153 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1267695879.htm
Customers connecting to the new pipe will access the Internet through the gateway known as pcl-ag02.

We've activated this bandwidth to accommodate the expected increase in customer numbers over the coming months.

When new capacity is added to the network, it takes time for it to balance and for a representative proportion of the customer base to connect to the new segments. In order to speed up this process we might need to briefly disconnect some broadband customers from the Internet. If we decide to do this then we'll announce further details as a planned maintenance notice nearer the time.

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support]]> 2010-03-04T09:44:39Z ADSL Dial F9-1267695879 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1267649858.htm
A copy of the notice follows:

"Following heavy snow falls and freezing temperatures in parts of Scotland Openreach is now declaring a matter beyond our reasonable control (MBORC)/force major event.

The declaration is effective from 08.00 today 3rd March 2010 and only applies where delays to provision and repair activities have been caused by the severe weather conditions in affected parts of Scotland.

The recent heavy snowfalls and freezing conditions in parts of Scotland over the last week have impacted Openreach by causing the reduced mobility of our engineering workforce particularly in remote areas.

This has resulted in a number of missed jobs and appointments. Whilst every effort has been made to contact those end users affected, we have not always been successful. We have carefully assessed the situation over the last few days and feel that we now have to declare MBORC due to the continuing severe conditions in the following regions:

- North East Scotland
- Tayside and Fife
- South East Scotland
- West Central Scotland

It should be stressed that it only applies to specific provision and repair activities delayed or prevented by the snow and freezing conditions.

We are, of course, doing all we can to minimise the impacts of these conditions and are working to restore affected services as quickly as possible.

We will continue to review this situation and will lift the MBORC as soon as service returns to normal."

We will provide another update as soon as we receive further information.

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support]]> 2010-03-03T20:57:38Z Other F9-1267649858 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1267448332.htm Tomorrow morning, 2nd March.

What does it affect?
Broadband traffic prioritisation.

How long will it take?
About an hour.

What does the work involve?
We will be making some changes to correct the classification of certain traffic across the network. This includes additional ports for the games 'Battlefield Heroes' and 'Global Agenda'. Once these changes have been made we will be reloading all of our traffic management switches to realign the traffic flows.

Am I likely to notice the work?
You might do. If you're unfortunate enough to be establishing a new connection to the Internet when we reload the traffic management switches then you might be assigned our default management profile. When this happens it tends to result in slower speeds and poorer performance than normal.

Is there anything else I need to know?
If you suspect you have been assigned a default traffic management profile then this can easily be rectified by disconnecting and reconnecting once the maintenance is complete.

Kind Regards,

Chris Parr
Customer Support]]> 2010-03-01T12:58:52Z ADSL Dial F9-1267448332 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1267205700.htm This weekend, 27th Feb - 28th Feb.

What does it affect?
Faults and ordering systems.

How long will it take?
Approximately 24 hours.

What does the work involve?
Our suppliers are upgrading their faults and ordering platforms.

Am I likely to notice this work?
Yes you may notice this work if you try to report a new broadband fault to us, this may also introduce delays in updates to existing fault tickets.

Is there anything else I need to know?
Customers will be unable to access our automated faults checker during this maintenance window as there will be holding pages in place. We'll also be unable to supply MAC keys during this period.

Kind Regards,

Chris Parr
Customer Support]]> 2010-02-26T17:35:00Z Portal F9-1267205700 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1267108768.htm
We installed a patch and reloaded the gateway early this morning and since then there have been no further problems. The network will take a day or two to fully rebalance itself, however we don't envisage this causing too many problems for customers.

Kind Regards,

Chris Parr
Customer Support]]> 2010-02-25T14:39:28Z ADSL Dial F9-1267108768 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1267089210.htm
This will have affected customers connected to both our 20CN (Up to 8Mbps) and 21CN (Up to 20Mbps) networks.

If you were disconnected due to this then you should have been able to get straight back online.

There will have been further disconnects following the initial drop as we implemented a patch and then reloaded the affected gateway.

If you are still experiencing problems getting back online then please try powering down your modem/router for 20 minutes before trying again.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this issue.

Kind Regards,

Chris Parr
Customer Support]]> 2010-02-25T09:13:30Z ADSL Dial F9-1267089210 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1267033112.htm Early tomorrow morning, 25th February

What does it affect?
Our internal systems.

How long will it take?
Up to six hours.

What does the work involve?
We're making some changes to our internal systems in order to improve the efficiency of some processes.

Am I likely to notice the work?
From approximately 12:30am to 5:00am you will be unable to get to our website. Holding pages will be in place.

Is there anything else I need to know?
No.

Kind Regards,

Matt Taylor
Customer Support]]> 2010-02-24T17:38:32Z Portal F9-1267033112 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1267028561.htm Tomorrow, 25th February.

What does it affect?
Gateway changes on our 21CN platform.

How long will it take?
Around 2 hours.

What does the work involve?
We've installed a new 21CN host link at one of our London data centres. To make use of this, we need to make some changes to our RADIUS servers.

Is it likely to cause problems?
No, it shouldn't do although customers on the 21CN network will now be able to connect to 2 additional gateways (PCL-AG02 & PCL-AG03).

Is there anything else I need to know?
Customer on 21CN will now be able to connect to any of the following gateways: PCL-AG02, PCL-AG03, PCL-AG04, THN-AG1 or THN-AG2.

Kind Regards,

Chris Parr
Customer Support]]> 2010-02-24T16:22:41Z Network Capacity (ADSL2+/21CN) F9-1267028561 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1267028389.htm This afternoon, 24th February.

What does it affect?
Available bandwidth on our 21CN (ADSL2+) platform.

How long will it take?
About fifteen minutes.

What does the work involve?
We will be making a change to the schedulers on our edge routers to utilise an additional 400Mbps bandwidth on our 21CN platform. This extra bandwidth will be provided across the gateway known as thn-ag1.

Am I likely to notice the work?
No.

Is there anything else I need to know?
No.

Kind Regards,

Chris Parr
Customer Support]]> 2010-02-24T16:19:49Z Network Capacity (ADSL2+/21CN) F9-1267028389 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1267025355.htm Tomorrow morning, 25th February.

What does it affect?
Broadband connectivity.

How long will it take?
About an hour.

What does the work involve?
We're installing a patch to one of our gateways in order to resolve a recently identified issue.

Am I likely to notice the work?
No you shouldn't do. If anything unexpected does happen then broadband customers connected to the gateway pcl-ag02 may be temporarily disconnected from the Internet.

Is there anything else I need to know?
No

Kind Regards,

Chris Parr
Customer Support]]> 2010-02-24T15:29:15Z ADSL Dial F9-1267025355 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1266946415.htm Tomorrow morning, 24th February.

What does it affect?
The database servers used for the automatic configuration of customers' routers -
http://community.plus.net/blog/2009/08/06/router-setup-the-easy-way/

How long will it take?
About thirty minutes.

What does the work involve?
Upgrading the software on some of the servers and pointing database requests at a different machine to the one that's currently in use.

Am I likely to notice the work?
For about ten minutes during the maintenance window, automatic router configuration will not work. It's very unlikely that any customers will be trying to set their equipment up this early in the morning so we don't think anybody will notice.

Is there anything else I need to know?
No.

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support]]> 2010-02-23T17:33:35Z Other F9-1266946415 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1266857856.htm
The changes we made towards the end of January seem to have fixed the issues we identified with our network.

We're continuing to work with our vendor to ensure that all avenues have been exhausted. In the mean time though, we're going to change Service Status back to 'Green', as any remaining problems are likely to be individual faults or due to factors outside of our control.

We are continuing to monitor feedback over on our discussion forums, so if you have some findings that you think it would be worthwhile sharing with us then please contribute to the following forum thread -
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,83000.msg690110.html#msg690110

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support]]> 2010-02-22T16:57:36Z Network Capacity (ADSL2+/21CN) F9-1266857856 http://usertools.f9.net.uk/status/archive/1266856111.htm
We reloaded the device early this morning and since then there have been no further problems. The network will take a day or two to fully rebalance itself, however we don't envisage this causing too many problems for customers.

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support]]> 2010-02-22T16:28:31Z ADSL Dial F9-1266856111