Internet problems?

[Ghostrider]

Well, whoopidy ****** doo, its double the speed of 5 days ago.

 

http://www.speedtest.net/result/3200943907.png

Edited January 1, 2014 by Ghostrider

[Colin]

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/138860679763174978037.png

 

Normal service (almost) resumed.

[DizzyKipper]

Spoke too soon

 

http://www.speedtest.net/result/3201123693.png

 

Maybe it's an evening thing

[Aaron Foord]

<a href="http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3201383295"><img src="http://www.speedtest.net/result/3201383295.png" /></a>

[neepjelly]

I've had the strangest updates from talktalk over the past few days from "a ship has been scheduled to fix the cable" to "it's been sent" then to be followed by "a decision on which ship to be sent will be made"

Nobody over there seems to know what the hells going on.

I keep speaking to really unhelpful people who keep repeating "there's an outage in your area"... YES, I am aware of this!!!

Have been told it's due to be back on at 8pm tomorrow night, if it isn't then i will definitely be changing providers.

I don't understand how they can value us so little.

[JustMe]

This is odd!.  My service (Plusnet 01957) is as bad as ever.  Meaning it is not worse.  In fact maybe the little drop outs have lessened a bit which means it is sort of better.  Download speeds in the upper 2mb range which is normal given the distance from the exchange.

 

Not at all sure about any ships fixing the cable in the current weather.  Might even cause more damage.

[Ledi]

Yes, there is a lot of confusion and(dare I say it) I've recieved more help/info from the SIBC news bulletins but even they were struggling to make sense of it. 

 

I finally got a phone call from the Post Office yesterday afternoon and a very apologetic man said they had traced the fault and were hoping to have it fixed by some time on Saturday.

 

It's been absolutely pitiful though and I'd hazard a guess that BT who could have re-routed the system for non-BT customers played politics and chose not to......

 

My brother who is with BT was back online within half a day last Saturday when the fault(s) originally occured.

 

I don't know if it's related but even the Shetland Library's internet  seems spluttery.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Ledi

[Equality Street]

It's my understanding that it's not just an internet connectivity issue. We've also lost our phoneline which has been down since the 27th.

 

Several other folk I know are in the same boat. We're with The Post Office, but I believe Talk-Talk customers are suffering as well.

 

I know of one elderly lady who's also been without phone or internet since the 27th. While such an outage is an annoyance for me, it's really hard on older folk who perhaps aren't so familiar with mobile technology and feel genuinely cut off from the rest of the world - especially over the festive season.

 

God forbid she has a medical issue and needs to call an ambulance. Fortunately her neighbour is with BT and she's been able to let her use the phone to call loved ones.  

 

I've been in touch with my provider several times and they've been utterly unhelpful. In fact I called BT to sign up for their service a few days back, as I'm done with the 2nd rate service other providers (Talk-talk, Sky etc) have given me.  It was so frustrating last year waiting for my broadband speed to be upgraded, while neighbours with BT were already enjoying their faster connections. 

BT are no angels, but after spending ages speaking to some chap in a call centre in India I was finally given a BT-WiFi password, which has allowed me to go online using their 'hotspots' while I await my new service activation on the 14th. 

Now I'm looking for some compensation from my old provider. The phrase 'blood from a stone' springs to mind. 

Edited January 3, 2014 by Horns 'O' Da Geo

[Ghostrider]

I've had the strangest updates from talktalk over the past few days from "a ship has been scheduled to fix the cable" to "it's been sent" then to be followed by "a decision on which ship to be sent will be made"

Nobody over there seems to know what the hells going on.

I keep speaking to really unhelpful people who keep repeating "there's an outage in your area"... YES, I am aware of this!!!

Have been told it's due to be back on at 8pm tomorrow night, if it isn't then i will definitely be changing providers.

I don't understand how they can value us so little.

 

Good luck finding one. As far as they're all concerned Shetland are high investment/low returns/high maintenance customers, and they really don't wanna know.

[Equality Street]

UPDATE: I hear Next Friday is the estimate for broadband to be back up.

 

Apparently the repair boat won't arrive till Monday.

[Ledi]

I did see a couple of BT men working down a manhole at Gremista today but goodness knows if it's related to the overall issue.

 

I'd had a simple and pretty reasonable service from the Post Office up until now but this has left me so peeved that I think it's time to jump ship and go to BT.  I suppose that's what BTare hoping folk will do but tbh if it's a better and more reliable service then there's really no argument.......

 

Most of the people I spoke to on the Post Office "helpline" were genuinely nice but they seemed helpless and unable/unwilling to even try and do anything about it and that's simply not good enough.

[Marvin]

The Shefa cable is broken between Orkney and Shetland. This is not an issue for most ADSL customers because all exchanges outside of Lerwick use BT Wholesale regardless of their ISP. BT Wholesale provide the backhaul and because they buy a resilient service from Faroese Telecom, these customers automatically either re-route to Torshavn and back to the UK by a different route (via Faroese Telecom and Shetland Telecom network) OR the old microwave link. BTW decide which customers/exchanges/services use which route and we have no visibility on which is using what route, so I can't give any further info.

 

In Lerwick, the situation is a little more complicated. There is another 'wholesale' provider. This wholesale provider has chosen not buy a resilient service and does not have the option of switching to an alternative route. Some ISPs (I'm guessing the Post Office is one judging by the comments above) use this wholesale provider (for broadband and voice). I would recommend that broadband customers change provider to one that uses resilient backhaul. Cable breaks are not uncommon and will happen again. 

 

I don't have a list of which ISPs use resilient backhaul services but I can confirm that  BT, Faroese Telecom, Shetland Telecom and Shetland Broadband customers are unaffected by the cable break (there may well be other unrelated problems on the networks which I don't know about though)

 

The cable ship is on route to repair the cable but weather is an issue. The fix is likely to take another week. We will be posting updates on the Shetland Telecom facebook page when we get them.

 

Marvin Smith

Shetland Telecom

Edited January 3, 2014 by Marvin

[Ghostrider]

^ "Resilient service" is maybe a nice buzz word, and gives those wired in to it a seamless service in the event of equipment failure on the preferred main routing. However, its a misnomer and a pretty useless Band Aid in reality. Every time re-routing occurs a significant proportion, if not the vast majority of users experience a degrading of service to the point of un-usability for a large proportion of each day due to system overload.

 

Ping is worse, sometimes much worse, download speed is so low its pointless trying (see my previous recent posts), and upload speed isn't the best either. Every day between approx 4.30pm and 2.30am its almost pointless going online, and the rest of the time its barely tolerable. This is how it was permanently in the final weeks before BT finally gave in and used SHEFA, and how it is every time SHEFA is down, guaranteed. The re-routing, someplace, if not everywhere simply cannot cope with the additional load trying to feed through it when SHEFA is offline, so for many "resilient service" simply means the difference between still being able to connect to the web, but pages taking 5 mins to load properly, if ever, and not being able to connect at all. Which in my book one isn't really all that different to the other.

 

If the "resilient service" actually had the space to cope with the traffic trying to use it when its needed, it would be a brilliant idea, unfortunately it doesn't have that space, cannot cope, and is a smoke and mirrors exercise to deflect an amount of the flack that would certainly follow with even a marginally worse service than is right now.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Ghostrider

[Marvin]

Our definition of 'resilient' is the same capacity on all routes. Customers connected to Shetland Telecom network will be experiencing a 5 to 10 millisecond increase in ping. No reduction in bandwidth whatsoever.

[JustMe]

Our definition of 'resilient' is the same capacity on all routes. Customers connected to Shetland Telecom network will be experiencing a 5 to 10 millisecond increase in ping. No reduction in bandwidth whatsoever.

But unless I am wrong that is limited to the lucky folk in Vidlin and Fetlar.  Or of course to some businesses and public sector companies.  Rest of us are left trying to find the least bad ISP within our budget.