Schools Broadband - Anyone else having Internet issues today?

[KevByrne]

Hi all,

 

Anyone else having Internet connectivity issues this morning?

 

Can't get hold of Schools Broadband support so just wondering if it is a national issue or just a Schools Broadband problem.

 

Thanks

Kev

[synaesthesia]

Yup, they've just emailed out to say 10 minute downtime.

[sister_annex]

Apparently they're suffering a sustained DDOS at the minute so we've been told it'll be intermittent for a while

[synaesthesia]

The joys of some bored little basement dwelling turdmonkeys using some googled scripts to cause that level of annoyance

[KevByrne]

Ok thanks for the replies.

At least I know it's not just us now.

[clockend25]

I'd love to find these DDOSers and slap them with a wet fish.

[jertsy]

Yeah, we are having intermittent access. All day yesterday as well as filter 5 went belly up apparently. Did anyone else on filter 5 have issues yesterday?

[Blue_Cookeh]

We had an e-mail from them this morning.

 

Hosted Service Issues

 

Please be advised that this morning we have experienced a hosted service outage lasting approximately 10 minutes.

Whilst action was immediately taken to restore service, impacted customers may now be experiencing slow performance or intermittent connectivity whilst the service fully returns to normal.

We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience and disruption this has caused.

 

A further update will be sent at 10am today.

 

Regards

Carole Mawson

Customer Technical Services Manager

[clockend25]

Yeah, we are having intermittent access. All day yesterday as well as filter 5 went belly up apparently. Did anyone else on filter 5 have issues yesterday?

Yes. We had a complete loss of internet for anyone using the SSL proxy, and then intermittent issues until the end of the day. I believe they swapped out the Lightspeed unit last night.

[Dom_]

Filter 5 was up and down yesterday - all the hardware was replaced last night and all seems fine this morning.

 

Filter 11 as others have said - had a DDOS this morning, all backup and running normally again now

[lmrogers]

We have been having a few issues this morning on filter7 where the user agent doesn't seem to be working properly.

[FN-GM]

duplicate thread - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/internet-related-filtering-firewall/184184-schools-broadband-15-05-17-a.html

[HBPS]

we lost access to the DNS servers for 20 mins this morning no communication from Schools broadband to say there was an issue

[philro]

we lost access to the DNS servers for 20 mins this morning no communication from Schools broadband to say there was an issue

 

There is never any communication from them - most of the time, the customer makes them aware of the issue....when you eventually get through on the support number!

[synaesthesia]

When they're dealing with a DDoS, what is it you expect from them exactly? Personalised phone calls to every customer? Have a callcenter on standby every time some script kiddie fancies a pop?

[Blue_Cookeh]

When they're dealing with a DDoS, what is it you expect from them exactly? Personalised phone calls to every customer? Have a callcenter on standby every time some script kiddie fancies a pop?

 

An e-mail in the least, which to be fair, is what we got so I ain't complaining

[synaesthesia]

Indeed; and they can't really be blamed if that doesn't go through because of the nature of the problem.

[HBPS]

I'd prefer a visit if I'm honest (Joke)

 

When they're dealing with a DDoS, what is it you expect from them exactly? Personalised phone calls to every customer? Have a callcenter on standby every time some script kiddie fancies a pop?

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hello everyone,

 

We actually get ddos'd near enough every week and most of the time we soak them up without anyone noticing.

 

The one that hit us today appears to be very very big. I don't have precise details yet as I'm out of the country on annual leave but back to work on Monday to will update you all then once I've spoke. With the relevant people.

 

We have actually caught pupils instigating ddos attacks before against there own school. This is actually more common than you'd imagine and have had relevant law enforcement used when required. I can't go into specifics or individual cases of course.

 

Ref filter 5. We had a total hardware failure and this was resolved last night.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[FN-GM]

@SchoolsBroadband As someone who has had a DDOS before, I am curious to know how you caught them please?

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hi @FN-GM,

 

we've lots of different ways as to how we can catch DDoS instigators. However I don't want to publicise them as I know pupils read this forum. Quite happy to have a chat or send me a PM if I can help give you ideas to combat them yourselves?

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[Fazza]

There is never any communication from them - most of the time, the customer makes them aware of the issue....when you eventually get through on the support number!

 

You can say what you like about them (and believe me I'm very honest with them) but we've never had a problem getting through them on the phone. Very, very short waiting times.

 

When they're dealing with a DDoS, what is it you expect from them exactly? Personalised phone calls to every customer? Have a callcenter on standby every time some script kiddie fancies a pop?

 

They could put a message on their support number saying what the major issue is so anyone calling up about it can then hang up and not bother them whilst they resolve the issue.

[SchoolsBroadband]

We do put messages on our support number. This is done straight away if we have a major service incident. It can take time to diagnose a DDoS depending on if its volumetric or application specific. These incidents require investigation so it'd be wrong and impossible for us to immediately say "we are being DDoS'd" before we know the cause of the issue.

 

Our process is to put a message onto the phone system saying we have an issue which is effecting xyz, send an email to all customers saying we are investigating the issue, update all customers by email at a specific time interval (if the issue takes a long time to fix), provide a brief summary to confirm issue has been resolved and then a full report is sent to everyone within x number of days specifying what the issue was, how we resolved it and what if anything we can do in the future to mitigate the issue.

 

The above isn't for a DDoS but for any major service incident. We follow ITIL processes where we can.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[clockend25]

We have actually caught pupils instigating ddos attacks before against there own school. This is actually more common than you'd imagine and have had relevant law enforcement used when required. I can't go into specifics or individual cases of

[Fazza]

We do put messages on our support number. This is done straight away if we have a major service incident. It can take time to diagnose a DDoS depending on if its volumetric or application specific. These incidents require investigation so it'd be wrong and impossible for us to immediately say "we are being DDoS'd" before we know the cause of the issue.

 

Our process is to put a message onto the phone system saying we have an issue which is effecting xyz, send an email to all customers saying we are investigating the issue, update all customers by email at a specific time interval (if the issue takes a long time to fix), provide a brief summary to confirm issue has been resolved and then a full report is sent to everyone within x number of days specifying what the issue was, how we resolved it and what if anything we can do in the future to mitigate the issue.

 

The above isn't for a DDoS but for any major service incident. We follow ITIL processes where we can.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

 

You can't do much more than that then!

 

I was sure I'd heard a message on your support line before and this confirms it. Never seen any emails though - that must be a good sign as no emails means no known major incidents affecting us!