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Schools Broadband issues

nicholab
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tinca492

tinca492

Posted
Posted

emails today (31st/10) have been regularly referring to network issues and loss of connectivity, of course you may not be receiving these if your link is down. quick paste from the latest one below

 

 

 

 

Network Connectivity

Issues

 

Our Network Operations Centre are

currently investigating a network connectivity issue. Impacted customers will

be seeing loss of internet connection.

 

Please be assured this is being

investigated with the utmost priority.

 

Next update will be circulated at

15:00.

 

Regards

 

Carole Mawson

 

Customer Technical Services Manager

SchoolsBroadband

SchoolsBroadband

Posted
Posted

Hi all,

 

Sorry for my late reply I've been away from the office.

 

 

A couple of issues today. 1. An aggregation router went bang and had to be physically replaced. 2. An interface on the Fortigate stopped working and didn't force a failure to the backup unit. That issue has been raised to Fortinet TAC and we await their response on what the issue is.

 

This only effected a small subset of customers but we'll work with the vendors as to why it happened.

 

The dead router has a new unit in place.

 

Sorry for the short notice but I'm on my phone away from baswe will be in touch with all effected.

 

Dave

Tefters

Tefters

Posted
Posted
A router go pop? I would question the make or surge protection around the unit, can't even remember the last time I heard of a router going pop...
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FN-GM

FN-GM

Posted
Posted
Hi all,

 

Sorry for my late reply I've been away from the office.

 

 

A couple of issues today. 1. An aggregation router went bang and had to be physically replaced. 2. An interface on the Fortigate stopped working and didn't force a failure to the backup unit. That issue has been raised to Fortinet TAC and we await their response on what the issue is.

 

This only effected a small subset of customers but we'll work with the vendors as to why it happened.

 

The dead router has a new unit in place.

 

Sorry for the short notice but I'm on my phone away from baswe will be in touch with all effected.

 

Dave

 

Concerning about the lack of redundancy in your routers.

 

How often do you test your failover in the Fortigate stuff?

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SchoolsBroadband

SchoolsBroadband

Posted
Posted

Evening @FN-GM,

 

We test them regularly. What we can't test for is bugs for obvious reasons. Our fortigate platform has generally been very stable with most having 100% uptimr since its inception.

 

Nobody likes any downtime or issues but if it happens we're always the first to hold our hands up.

 

Dave

FN-GM

FN-GM

Posted
Posted
Evening @FN-GM,

 

We test them regularly. What we can't test for is bugs for obvious reasons. Our fortigate platform has generally been very stable with most having 100% uptimr since its inception.

 

Nobody likes any downtime or issues but if it happens we're always the first to hold our hands up.

 

Dave

 

Ok but how can one router going offline cause downtime?

Tefters

Tefters

Posted
Posted

Second that ^^^

 

My previous employer wanted me to design and build a broadband offering for schools in the area which I gladly obliged to then have the design ripped apart due to my costings and it is currently live today for 35 school with no switch redundancy or UPS on the fortigate. Did I also forget to mention they decided SSL inspection was too much hassle so didn't even advise customer that HTTPS inspection was not even on.

 

1 of the reasons I will never buy a fully managed package! You never have full control and always end up with some poor excuse at the end of a design failure.

 

Going by Dave's response there are 2 Fortigate's, hopefully redundant switches and 1 router. Someone missed the single point of failure concept there!

synaesthesia

synaesthesia

Posted
Posted

Only so much you can do with redudancy; we'd all like to have something to fall back on ideally but budget doesn't always allow. It's a bit annoying when you have two schools side by side with identical length broadband contracts with different suppliers. One is desperate to leave due to reliability and the other has had absolutely 0 downtime or performance issues (with the notable exception of when a 3rd party was involved, openreach usually!)

Devils advocate, I think we're going to get to the point where it's going to be near impossible to find a service with stupid high levels of availability, script-kiddy/DDoS proof and a reasonable cost but at the same time worrying that so much is going entirely "cloud" based. I don't like the idea that a school can be pretty much marooned if the internet goes tits up!

mrbios

mrbios

Posted
Posted
You get downtime with everything

 

This is why companies invest in redundancy and we buy into services that have service level agreements. A 99.997% (Assuming SB are still stating those same figures) uptime suggets 15 minutes downtime per year. These threads suggest otherwise, which in turn suggests a lack of promised redundancy.

 

Threads like this one, and the filter issues months back are the reason I've brought my firewall/filter services back in house. It's a nice idea to have them hosted, but overall I felt I was providing a worse service to my school by doing so.

localzuk

localzuk

Posted
Posted
Ok but how can one router going offline cause downtime?

The way I read it was that the router went down, and a bug in Fortigate failed to handle the failover to another router.

FN-GM

FN-GM

Posted
Posted
The way I read it was that the router went down, and a bug in Fortigate failed to handle the failover to another router.

 

Ah yes! You may have a point. I read it as 2 separate incidents.

localzuk

localzuk

Posted
Posted

Its actually quite surprising how often failover fails. I've seen it from SWGfL, Schools Broadband, BT, TalkTalk, Vodafone and more. It seems even with the best will in the world, and the best planning, failover solutions just don't seem to be a guarantee of reduced downtime.

 

Even testing it regularly doesn't seem to provide any guarantee.

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Oaktech

Oaktech

Posted
Posted
Its actually quite surprising how often failover fails. I've seen it from SWGfL, Schools Broadband, BT, TalkTalk, Vodafone and more. It seems even with the best will in the world, and the best planning, failover solutions just don't seem to be a guarantee of reduced downtime.

 

Even testing it regularly doesn't seem to provide any guarantee.

 

There will nearly always be a scenario you can't test for!

Blue_Cookeh

Blue_Cookeh

Posted
Posted (edited)

To be honest I'm completely fed up of SchoolsBroadband.

 

I was so happy to get away from our LA's terrible support, but at least their broadband didn't go down. Since signing up with SB in the last 6 months or so we've had plenty of downtime/issues, and whilst SB have sent status updates out via e-mail it a) doesn't make up for the failed service and b) makes me look like a fool for switching to them in school.

 

I wouldn't give a hoot during the holidays, but every time it goes down other people are telling me before I (who works off-site) knows, and before SB send anything out.

 

What also irks me is that I've complained to Carole (The service manager I think?), our account manager, and Dave ( @SchoolsBroadband; ) but no one has ever replied.

 

We have a simple FTTC line from Eclipse Internet for our SIP trunks (since SB couldn't get their own SIP trunks working through their Fortigate firewalls) which has seen better uptime.

Edited by Blue_Cookeh
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Wubbalubbadub

Wubbalubbadub

Posted
Posted

We have had a few blips. The primary schools I support had full outages.

3 schools that all are checking small prints and waiting for contract expires!

My main school has phoned the solicitor and we are waiting for that! [emoji53]

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Wubbalubbadub

Wubbalubbadub

Posted
Posted
The only recourse for downtime in the SLA is a service credit. I wish we could get away with such a lax SLA :)

"Sorry I'm hindering education, please accept £10 as an apology."

 

Tell Carole that... my backup line was down for over 100 days! Asked for service credit and got the "backup lines are not included" speech.

 

When I mention the main line credits... lord Jesus! Good luck!

 

You may joke... but when I'm authorising £10,000+ of yours and mine tax money for this broadband to aid the teaching and learning... it takes the Mick that we are being told a £4000 (or whatever the cost) is causing us downtime!

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jertsy

jertsy

Posted
Posted
We have had a few blips too but by and large its worked well for the 2 and a half years we have had their provision (VOIP and Leased line). What I do find odd is that SB have never built a customer relationship with us at all, all other major suppliers will come out and see me once or twice a year, or at least call me to see how things are going but I never get that with SB and I have flagged it up to my account manager and a few other folks there but I get no action, its as if they just dont do that as a company but it would be nice to be able to give feedback and flag up any concerns etc... Dont get me wrong, the main thing is that the system works well and I would rather have that than a poor system and an account manager calling me all the time.
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