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[guest]

You both have my sympathies. Dire reliability and worse customer service were hallmarks of Be when I was with them so I do know how you feel. Be is fine until something goes wrong then you might as well be with Tiscali for all the "support" you'll get

[jid]

You both have my sympathies. Dire reliability and worse customer service were hallmarks of Be when I was with them so I do know how you feel. Be is fine until something goes wrong then you might as well be with Tiscali for all the "support" you'll get

Tiscali Support takes some beating 

[kitz]

Yeah information coming out seems to be very sparse..  why theres a problem letting the users know whats up Ive no idea. 

I suspect the root of the problem is a shortage of bandwidth on the transit links.  There is rumours trickling around that theyre waiting for a new link to go in.   This will have been compounded by the fibre break.

Where I think they are going wrong is not officially announcing whats wrong and where.. and then the user at least knows where they stand..  but leaving us in the dark isnt good. 
Even their CS dont seem to have any info, so that route is useless.

On Friday afternoon I received notification  from someone in authority who has took on board my comments, and stating they will aim to try and get a proper update out on Monday about whats happening. 
- So we shall see.

[jabns]

1 member just got this in a ticket apparently. Everybody has an email as well.

Dear Member

We are currently aware of an increase in ping times that is affecting
some of our members' internet usage. This has been predominantly down
to an unexpected spike in usage over the past few weeks which we are
now urgently trying to combat.

Over the immediate coming weeks we will be working on our transit
links, which will be completed on the 17th November. We will also be
upgrading specific exchanges so that service will return back to its
normal reliable self. These exchanges include; Marylebone, Norbury,
Kidbrooke, Guildford, Newington, and Dunfermline. If you are
experiencing issues and your exchange has not been mentioned here,
please wait until the end of this week in case it is related to the
transit links. If you are then still experiencing issues, please raise
a ticket in your member centre as it may be an individual issue.

Currently we're unable to give specific times of the upgrades but we
will post these on our network status page which is linked to our
forum. You can login to the forum for further updates via
www.bethere.co.uk.

We are so sorry for any inconvenience this may be causing and are
working very hard to get things sorted for you as soon as possible.

Kind regards

The Be Team

"spike in usage over the past few weeks" = Oversubscribing more like  They must have been running very close to the limits though on the links if a "spike" could cause this. I think they need to bring new links live a bit earlier in future. Surely when a transit link is at say 80% of the maximum capacity it would be wise to be ordering the next one.

At least they have said something about the issue at last. It should be in a sticky though and on the portal. 

[kitz]

1 member just got this in a ticket apparently. Everybody has an email as well.

Thanks to the person I spoke to at Be for listening, he said they'd try get something out today to everyone.

>> It should be in a sticky though and on the portal.

Agree - Funny enough I said the same thing about half an hour ago... and that they should make it a sticky

[jabns]

Now there DNS is failing for anyone that still uses it. 

Only 2 of there DNS servers are replying to requests. I am currently trying to help about 30 people in the forum who have limited internet access change there DNS servers. Presumably the beforum is in there local DNS cache.

[kitz]

 

[guest]

These will be the DNS machines which have always been dodgy? The same ones Be claimed a customer "attacked" one of the (many) times they died/stopped responding?

Nothing ever changes

[kitz]

Yeah those are the ones 

Luckily I didnt notice it since I have Be's set as primary, but OpenDNS as a backup, so I imagine it will have automatically failed over to openDNS.

[jabns]

Just some more very strange graphs from tonight(vertical line).



Be* seem to have discovered light switches 

It is annoying aswell because now there is packet loss but only for a couple of seconds but it is enough to sign me out of msn ect... maybe while the routing is being updated?

[kitz]

I'm seeing exactly the same thing here on my graphs ...   I said to someone else earlier on in the week its like they flick a switch at xtime, and then turn it off again some point after midnight.
Theres no build up like what you would expect to see under normal course of events..  and its a sign of flick of the switch somewhere.

[Floydoid]

I said to someone else earlier on in the week its like they flick a switch at xtime, and then turn it off again some point after midnight.

I've noticed that when I check my router pages it has occasionally reconnected itself at sometime between midnight and 0200 hrs... dunno if that is related to this or not.

[kitz]

The routers not actually loosing sync - but we are experiencing high latency and loss of packets.

At some point in the evening traffic for some users appears to possibly be re-routed (although theres no obvious indication in a trace).  Times at which it can occur are anytime between 4-7pm.  The they switch it off again some time around midnightish.

Its almost like they say "ooh lets move all these x-number of users over to another transit".. only that particular transit is congested.  If youre one of those thats been moved then your latency will shoot up.   How they select which users to move Ive no idea..  Its not exchange specific.. and not static IP related.

James - this is a really wild shot stab in the dark..  you know you say you have one link that gets affected and another that doesnt.   Well Ive not been around the past couple of days.. therefore not online using the connection, but I dont appear to have been affected those days. See my f8lure graphs below.  The 30th is interesting theres blip packet loss at 4.15.. but no actual increase.  For some reason I dont have a plot for the 31st from f9lure.

With me not being around its hard to say exactly what happened (or didnt).. but I appear to have been ok last nite too - but it was late when I got online anyhow.

Posting the graphs so you can see what has been happening - and then the graph for the 30th which was when I wasnt using the connection.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[orainsear]

I've been toying with the idea of moving to Be and was wondering how things are looking with Be now - in particular the latency issues.

Is there any way for a non Be customer to check the current service status in their geographical locality?

[kitz]

I dont think there is - some areas seem a bit patchy and there are some areas where they are still waiting for upgrades.

Touch wood Ive been ok since the Nov fix, although I did have one night of flakiness about a week ago.