UFB Outage - 13hrs

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RossS

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#179181 30-Aug-2015 12:10

We have had Spark fibre installed since 3rd July. Our setup is:

Chorus ONT to Huawei HG659b gateway
phone line from POTS port on the ONT
gateway connected to 24 port switch, then distributed to various devices/users
mixture of wifi and ethernet connected devices

Our internet connection failed at 8pm Saturday night and returned at 9am Sunday (no changes made or action taken to get it back on the Sunday). The gateway essentially reported an input or cable fault - said to check cable - implying that it wasn't getting any signal from the ONT.

The phone line remained on throughout this time.

We have had occasional outages over the last few weeks but these have been fixed with a reboot. In last night's case, rebooting both devices didn't fix the problem.

I have contacted Spark, but they do not have any record of problems with our connection, so are unable to help. They suggested in future that I disconnect the downstream devices to allow troubleshooting. I am quite certain that this is not a downstream problem. Both wired and wifi connections with the gateway were ok during this time.

The Spark online help with respect to the ONT says:

Power light - should be on (solid) and green
Optical light - should be on (solid) and green
LAN light - should be on and green

With the system back up and running I now have:

Power light - on (solid) and green
Optical light - flashing on/off about 1 sec frequency, green
LAN light - orange flashing - like a data transfer light say on a hard drive

Does anyone know if the differences in the lights I have noted are significant?

regards
Ross

DarkShadow

1647 posts

Uber Geek

#1376380 30-Aug-2015 12:18

Check the ONT lights when your internet go down.

Nebbie

458 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1376383 30-Aug-2015 12:28

The Spark online help with respect to the ONT says:

Power light - should be on (solid) and green
Optical light - should be on (solid) and green
LAN light - should be on and green

With the system back up and running I now have:

Power light - on (solid) and green
Optical light - flashing on/off about 1 sec frequency, green
LAN light - orange flashing - like a data transfer light say on a hard drive
.

Not sure if Sparks online help is correct unless they are talking about a different ONT.

When testing my connection Optical light is blinking when there's a session and solid green when there's no session but optics is ok.
the LAN lights are always Orange never seen them green.

I'm 99% sure when you lose optics the optics light goes red.. (Spade Fade)

I know the ONT has issues with DHCP and very rarely however I believe a reset fix's the problem though.

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Nebukadnessar

BarTender

3606 posts

Uber Geek

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Lifetime subscriber

#1376405 30-Aug-2015 14:11

The Chorus LAN light shows if connected at 100MB vs 1GB. With a HG659 you will have a 1GB connection to the ONT.

It seems rather strange that you still had Voice over Fibre service but Broadband wasn't working. Were you able to make a call or did you just check you had dial tone? Since the ATA always gives dial tone when it's registered, and the registration lasts 2 hours so if there was some intermediate issue the dial tone would still exist but you wouldn't be able to make / receive calls. If it was physical or network related the neither Voice or Broadband would be working.

To me it sounds like a faulty modem or your network was congested.

RossS

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1376620 30-Aug-2015 21:18

Thanks for your replies.

Darkshadow,
Yes, will try and pay more attention to the ONT lights when/if this occurs again. Also have to try and educate the kids to pay attention!

Nebbie,
I believe it to be the standard Spark/Chorus ONT - it looks just like the one in the picture on the Spark help page (https://www.spark.co.nz/help/internet-data/equipment/how-to-check-or-restart-your-ont/)
So it looks as if the light descriptions given by Spark are not accurate.

BarTender,
We were able to make calls while the internet was out - in fact I spent about an hour on hold trying to speak to a Spark help desk person on Saturday night (unsuccessfully). This is what puzzled me. I thought it might be a fibre fault, but that doesn't make sense if the phone was still working.