Sky Fibre Optic

Caporegime
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only me in the house, widows 7 on the system and I have stopped the updates due to having the non supported cpu issue for my intel 7600k. What I also forgot to say was I had no phone either; dial tone but no service, leads me to believe there was an outage. Oh now downloads going on & no apple devices hogging bandwidth, all is fine today which means its either an exchange update or rooting issues on their service.
Dial tone but no service would suggest an exchange issue which is in the Openreach domain, not Sky's but don't let that stop you criticising them.
 
Associate
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Dial tone but no service would suggest an exchange issue which is in the Openreach domain, not Sky's but don't let that stop you criticising them.

Bah, get seriously critical of someone saying one issue leading to another. I have had my fair share of openreach rubbish as of late but would that not be a service update from sky on the exchange if the latency was over 100ms and the net dropping later also the phone? ah one other thing with the mobile app last night it wouldnt allow me to access my account to check the status & yes I know it was on 4g so shouldve shown something.
 
Caporegime
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Bah, get seriously critical of someone saying one issue leading to another. I have had my fair share of openreach rubbish as of late but would that not be a service update from sky on the exchange if the latency was over 100ms and the net dropping later also the phone? ah one other thing with the mobile app last night it wouldnt allow me to access my account to check the status & yes I know it was on 4g so shouldve shown something.
Sky would only generally post an update on their site for full outages. There are dozens of minor issues daily around the UK which you won't ever see nor hear of if you just look at ISP status pages.
 
Caporegime
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Is that due to lack of information from OpenReach until an incident is raised, or ISPs not wanting to provide granular status information to customer?
Because if an issue is only affecting a single card in a single DSLAM, 48 customers maximum, many of which may not even be Sky customers, the status page would be dozens of entries long. For Sky to actively monitor these outages would also be counter productive.

When Openreach pick up an issue on their network, as they often do before the customer or the ISP realise they'll flag the fault on their own systems.

To give you an example, these are the 'Matters Beyond Our Reasonable Control' lists on the first page of the openreach website. It's very unlikely any of these would appear on an ISP's status page. These MBORC's are generally due to hamfisted digger drivers, incorrect information on openreach Databases (nah mate, that cable's not in use, pull it out') and simple age/weather related damage:

various Belfast, Province - repair 18/10/2017, 23:59
TIMBERSCOMBE TA24 7DT CP4 OFF DP89 ON THE B3224 18/10/2017, 15:45 25/10/2017
DRINGHOUSES FRAC 113549 YO242QA Marsh farm, Dringhouses 16/10/2017, 14:00 16/10/2017
Wombourne WV50AQ O/S Waggon & Horses Pub, Wombourne. 13/10/2017, 12:30 14/10/2017
NANTYDERRY NP151JN PCP8 BETTWS NEWYDD 12/10/2017, 16:00 19/10/2017
Muswell Hill N10 3HU Muswell Hill London 11/10/2017, 15:00 11/10/2017
HUNTINGDON PE28 4PF HUNTINGDON 12/10/2017, 16:06 16/10/2017
RHAYADER ld6 5dr RHAYADER 12/10/2017, 12:00 13/10/2017
WALWORTH SE24 0QQ NEW RBS6102 CAB/CAB SWAP 108 SHAKESPEARE ROAD LONDON 10/10/2017, 09:00 20/10/2017
GLENBOIG G69 0HQ CHRYSTON,GLASGOW 12/10/2017, 14:38 16/10/2017

The first date is the reported time, the second is the estimated repair time. Some of them are closed, others are not. To use the second top, Timberscombe, the report says: MBORC Description: POLE SMASH, CABLES HAVE BEEN RIPPED OFF AND CUT IN HALF. This pole, if it's the end of the line may only support 10-20 customers. although possibly more if it's further up the chain, but likely less than 150-200 customers across all ISP's. This wouldn't really appear on a status page but would flag up if an ISP were to run a test on the line. For Fibre this would flag up as 'DT, Service found to be part of an existing network event'. In other words Openreach know it's down and are working to resolve.


Another example:
BRACKNELL 51 03/10/2017 We are working to rejoin cables 20/10/2017

That's 51 'Trouble Reports' (what Openreach call a fault) for a cable break. Sure, it's likely a few more people have been cut off due to this and haven't yet reported the fault, but out of Sky's 5 million broadband customers, is putting a fault that could only be affecting 15-20 customers, less than 0.001% of Sky broadband customers on the status page worth it? I'm sure you'll agree, probably not.
 
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Associate
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Got into work tonight and a work mate said his son was going off it as he was playing online last night at 12ish and his game quit. Now this person lives down the road from me, well half a mile and is on skys adsl service. He said that the router showed an orange light stating no internet. He logged into his router and it showed he was connected but no internet. Now thats an interesting thing to be authenticated to the network but no connection. Well its either an openreach issue or a possible equipment issue in the exchange.

Im not going to bash sky as I have had great customer service and somethings are out of their hands. Its a shame they cant change profiles, lower max delay like on their own adsl equipment.
 
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Caporegime
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If you want a managed service then pay for a managed service. I don't even agree with mandatory compensation for broadband outages.
 
Caporegime
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If you want a managed service then pay for a managed service. I don't even agree with mandatory compensation for broadband outages.
We'll happily give it but the salt when we say 'You're not paying for your broadband anyway, there's no credit to apply' or 'your service was off for one day, I've credited your account with 27p' is large and real. Then you get the 'I want a compensation payment, free Fibre for a month! My daughter/son/husband is studying for her/his degree and needs broadband!' when if it really was so important they could easily go into college/Uni and use the Internet in the library and 'I'm going to the Ombudsman! This is ridiculous!' when not only will OFCOM not listen to them until they've been through the Sky complaints procedure OFCOM themselves state that the only payment customers are due back if the issue is outwith Sky's direct control is their loss of service. Anything over and above that is at Sky's goodwill!

There's also loads of crying and furious anger when they say they need to fixed today because they use it for work when we always say, without exception at the time of ordering, 'Sky Broadband is for home domestic use only' and then they get upset and are apparently losing 'thousands of pounds a day' without internet access but when we say 'up to 5 working days' then go a little bit crazy and start demanding priority. There is no priority. For anyone, Sky staff included unless you have a specific medical need or a care alarm service.

I try to avoid telling them that if their business cannot function without broadband they should stop being so ****ing cheap and pay £30-£40pm for same or next day fault resolution business broadband. That's unlikely to go down well at the time but I have suggested it to some customers if they're decent enough about the situation.

Then you get the 'I had to buy extra Data at a cost of £20 due to the outage, can I have that refunded'. No is the answer. You chose to pay for extra Data.
 
Soldato
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Because if an issue is only affecting a single card in a single DSLAM, 48 customers maximum, many of which may not even be Sky customers, the status page would be dozens of entries long. For Sky to actively monitor these outages would also be counter productive.


... <snip>

Thanks. Good information.

I did corporate IT support for 15+ years for various companies. I'm well aware of the chaos a idiot digger driver can cause!

Had a "fun" one earlier in the year. My employer (local government) was working on a road improvement project. A hamfisted digger operator subcontracted to our subcontractor working on the road project managed to attack a few hundred fibres in two separate bundles which took out most of our communications to sites across the town, plus OpenReach internet (inc Sky) and some Virgin provision to the majority of the town for a couple of days. Reporting a comms outage to a supplier with an SLA that's ultimately ends up as sort of your own fault got a bit weird! So it wasn't like the affected staff could work from home either...

That one did make it to the status page.
 
Associate
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Thanks. Good information.

I did corporate IT support for 15+ years for various companies. I'm well aware of the chaos a idiot digger driver can cause!

Had a "fun" one earlier in the year. My employer (local government) was working on a road improvement project. A hamfisted digger operator subcontracted to our subcontractor working on the road project managed to attack a few hundred fibres in two separate bundles which took out most of our communications to sites across the town, plus OpenReach internet (inc Sky) and some Virgin provision to the majority of the town for a couple of days. Reporting a comms outage to a supplier with an SLA that's ultimately ends up as sort of your own fault got a bit weird! So it wasn't like the affected staff could work from home either...

That one did make it to the status page.

Um oddly enough, they have been doing road resurfacing next to the exchange over the past week overnight so that couldve been the culprit.
 
Associate
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OK then well it has to be routing, if anyone has steam & counter strike 1.6 installed try this server please 46.101.90.243:27020 Now this issue has been going on a while and its not locality either. One from sittingbourne, one devon, me newcastle, one in leeds & another in middlesborough. we are all sky so, my ping is currently 180ms to this uk server which we own, seems to be affected from 19:30 till 22:00.
 
Associate
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I presume you work in networks to assume that high ping to an IP address 'must be a routing issue'?

Nope I dont work in networks but if a connection to this server between this time and only sky users are affected would demonstrate that its routing and how many hops its taking for us to get there. When others on BT and VM are unaffected, just after 22:00 my ping started to drop to about 20 without fluctuations. Will have to do a tracert later to see how many time outs.. oh only a couple of servers affected so its routing to them.
 
Man of Honour
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Nope I dont work in networks but if a connection to this server between this time and only sky users are affected would demonstrate that its routing and how many hops its taking for us to get there. When others on BT and VM are unaffected, just after 22:00 my ping started to drop to about 20 without fluctuations. Will have to do a tracert later to see how many time outs.. oh only a couple of servers affected so its routing to them.
Everything you've just said confirms that you know little about how networks work and what causes issues.
 
Associate
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Everything you've just said confirms that you know little about how networks work and what causes issues.

That maybe so but please explain this

tracert 46.101.90.243

Tracing route to 46.101.90.243 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 2 ms 2 ms 1 ms SkyRouter.Home [192.168.0.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 25 ms 101 ms 101 ms be453.pr2.enlba.isp.sky.com [2.120.11.41]
4 125 ms 101 ms 101 ms 195.66.238.25
5 87 ms 100 ms 55 ms 138.197.249.229
6 146 ms 31 ms 78 ms 46.101.90.243

Trace complete

tracert www.sky.com

Tracing route to e1264.g.akamaiedge.net [2.22.135.63]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms SkyRouter.Home [192.168.0.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 24 ms 22 ms 24 ms be453.pr3.hobir.isp.sky.com [2.120.11.53]
4 28 ms 23 ms 23 ms linx-224.retn.net [195.66.224.193]
5 22 ms 20 ms 23 ms GW-Akamai.retn.net [87.245.245.29]
6 22 ms 24 ms 22 ms 2.22.135.63

Trace complete.

http://www.ip-tracker.org/locator/ip-lookup.php?ip=195.66.238.25


Tracing route to 46.101.90.243 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms SkyRouter.Home [192.168.0.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 16 ms 16 ms 16 ms be453.pr2.enlba.isp.sky.com [2.120.11.41]
4 138 ms 138 ms 142 ms 195.66.238.25
5 140 ms 141 ms 141 ms 138.197.249.229
6 139 ms 135 ms 133 ms 46.101.90.243

Trace complete.

same tonight
 
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Associate
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Thoughts on the current Fibre deals from Sky? £25 for Fibre unlimited and £30 Fibre max.

Worth waiting until Friday to see if they might offer something else or? Am paying £42 at the moment with BT but am looking to switch to Sky, Vodafone have better deals but not sure what they are like for customer service. I have a Home Hub 6 at the moment so am a bit wary on how the Sky Q Hub will perform in comparison but online it seems to get generally good reviews.
 
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