Planned outages for the next 6 weeks

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Planned outages for the next 6 weeks

PaulBags

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#198941 29-Jul-2016 01:51

Planned outages for the next 6 weeks, between 1am & 6am "for no more than 30min" - been down in New Brighton (edit no PPP authentication) for coming up 40min. http://www.spark.co.nz/help/servicealert/broadbandservicealert

These things happen, might have been nice to be told though :/.

Edit: down for roughly an hour and counting.

BarTender

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#1600433 29-Jul-2016 06:19

Software updates on a best efforts service after midnight for about an hour rolling across the country. If you wanted a SLA and notification there are plenty of business services that offer it but I suspect the service may be a little more expensive.
And in regards to sending a email to impacted customers do you know how many calls into the help desk that would cause "do I need to reboot my router". Easier to just do it as there are very few who will actually notice.

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PaulBags

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#1600567 29-Jul-2016 09:53

Yeah, fair call. Spark responded on facebook that it's only once per line, so that's good to know.

cbrpilot

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#1600607 29-Jul-2016 10:29

@PaulBags, just do be aware that the afore mentioned software upgrade is not the only piece of work happening on the Broadband network at the moment, so take the "once per line" with a grain of salt. That statement would have referred solely to the software upgrades. Chorus are doing upgrades as well, and there are also hardware upgrades happening in some places. The reality of operating a large Broadband network is that upgrades is all parts of the network are a regular occurance.

My views are my own, and may not necessarily represent those of my employer.

PaulBags

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#1606668 9-Aug-2016 01:26

You called it, down again. Exact same issue.

rugrat

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#1606675 9-Aug-2016 02:26

Mine went down just after 1am.

It's back up, now but the phone is still out.

Internet maintance also means loss of landline, hope no one has a heart attack in early mourning hours or something else needing medical emergency, first instint is to reach for landline, not mobile.

Landline just went solid, so it's back up now.

It was only because phone light flashing I knew it wasn't my computer. All other lights on modem, ont were doing the same as when internet connection is working.

cbrpilot

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#1606899 9-Aug-2016 12:13

Broadband services off one of our Broadband Network Gateways in Christchurch had a approx 15 minute outage as part of our planned work.

Voice (over Fibre) services take longer to auto-recover. If your Broadband services up and you can force the voice to recover immediately by restarting the ONT.

Those that were impacted last night will be impacted again in the coming weeks as we do a hardware upgrade on that particular node. Same short outage.

My views are my own, and may not necessarily represent those of my employer.

BarTender

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#1616113 23-Aug-2016 05:39

Pretty sure Wellington was done overnight as my PPP session dropped but not my DSL. Apart from that it's business as usual this morning.

Down: Aug 23, 2016 01:05:28 AM
Up: Aug 23, 2016 01:20:42 AM

I can live with that.

Talkiet

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#1616164 23-Aug-2016 09:05

BarTender:

Pretty sure Wellington was done overnight as my PPP session dropped but not my DSL. Apart from that it's business as usual this morning.

Down: Aug 23, 2016 01:05:28 AM
Up: Aug 23, 2016 01:20:42 AM

I can live with that.

That's a hell of a throughput number for DSL mate!

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

bigears

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#1617584 25-Aug-2016 20:53

I just experienced loss of connectivity (VoIP, web, etc) on my Spark UFB 30/10 connection early this morning - 2-4 am Thu 25th Aug.

At first it dropped out and I could get it back by rebooting the HG630b router, but then that didn't work and I had to power cycle the ONT & router together.

On the third disconnection neither rebooting or power cycle would work, so I gave up trying and reluctantly had to switch to mobile data.

Too early in the morning to bother contacting the help desk, but when I next re-tried using it around midday, it was working again.

At the time there were planned outages posted at the support web site www.spark.co.nz/help/servicealert/broadbandservicealert for various rural and southern locations, but nothing in Auckland.

So it would seem that Spark/Chorus do take liberties with connectivity during "graveyard" hours!

Annoying and disappointing, but I guess just count myself fortunate that it fixed itself. I really dislike spending hours on a phone or chat window trying to track down that some planned maintenance is affecting my line.

So for the benefit of others that may experience this, I've seen it (loss of connectivity during graveyard hours) too, and it came back by itself.

cbrpilot

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#1617705 26-Aug-2016 09:32

Hi @bigears,

edit> removed incorrect information, see next post.

My views are my own, and may not necessarily represent those of my employer.

cbrpilot

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#1617724 26-Aug-2016 10:07

My apologies, for Auckland I was looking at the wrong morning.

Yes, there was an outage from around 0250 to 0400 impacting some Auckland UFB (but not all). It was not planned work by Spark, and must have either been planned work by Chorus, or a failure in the Chorus network.

My views are my own, and may not necessarily represent those of my employer.