How to break a network

I have to say that our favorite telco are at it again a little bit...

We are working with them quite well, but some times they just take the biscuit, and this is one of them.

They are, for the third time now over the last few years, taking everyone off line for hours over night. 6 hours in fact. It is one area at a time and there are about 20 areas.

Each one causes everyone in the "metronode", whether 20CN or 21CN, to go off line all night.

Extra catches - when the do the area covering the node we are connected to (Stepney Green), that means all lines we have going down again everywhere. So 95% of people get two outages of 6 hours not just one.

And why? To "add resilience". And this is the third time now. Someone does not understand the word "resilience".

Just to add to the fun, this time, when they take out each node they are shutting down RADIUS so even if not in one of the affected areas, if you go off line, you will not get on line until 6am, tough!

And did they tell us - well technically yes - a notice (one of dozens a day) said they would do this, but unlike other notices it did not list the circuits affected. So kind of missed.

Manchester and Faraday have been done, so many more to go - all going on status pages.

We are not alone in being outraged. There are even some companies offering some interesting alternatives to these links we have to our favorite telco which would avoid this Dent in our service now and then...

I'll try and find more details. It may be that this time they are actually adding resilience and it will be the last time. That would be good news, but I am not holding my breath.