Category: Planned Works

On the Friday the 29th of January between 21:00 & 21:30 we will be upgrading our LNS servers to the latest vendor software release.

This work will start by upgrading lns02.dsl.structuredcommunications.co.uk first. We will then drop some DSL sessions on lns01.dsl.structuredcommunications.co.uk to ensure they properly re-terminate on LNS02 with traffic flow as expected. We will then upgrade LNS01, dropping all sessions once complete. Sessions should re-terminate on LNS01. Any sessions that remain on LNS02 after the upgrade ,will be dropped and moved back to LNS01.

UPDATE01 – 29/01/2016 – 20:05 This work is complete. If you still dont have service then please restart your equipment. Some device may need to be powered down for 20 minutes to clear any stale or stuck sessions.

We have been advised that our wholesale provider will be moving some of our Virgin Media circus to a new POP as part of planned capacity upgrade works at Telehouse East on Tuesday 19th Jan 2015 between 0:01 – 06:00.

Circuits with backup will continue service operation with the only interruption seen when the main service goes offline.

We apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

We have been advised by one of our interconnect providers that that they will be conducting a software upgrade on there core Junos router at Telehouse North between 23:00 and 03:00 on the 07/12/2015 from 23:00 – 03:00. This upgrade work will affect one of our fibre waves we use for DSL termination back in to our network at Goswell Road. DSL traffic traversing over this link will drop during the maintenance window, however should re-establish over an alternative link via Telehouse East which is unaffected.

The nature of these works include a reload of the Junos hardware at Telehouse North by our wave supplier and in theory should be the only disruption we see. Unfortunately sort disruptions like this will cause multiple DSL PPP session re-terminations as they flip back and forth between Telehouse North and Telehouse East as our network is designed to use the former where possible. Due this concern and avoiding any other unforeseen issues that will cause session drops during the maintenance windows, we will be manually shutting down the Telehouse North link at 22:00 on the night with the view of bringing it backup at 07:00 the following morning. This will limit the session drops to these times and provide a stable service throughout.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

UPDATE 01 – 21:50 We have removed LNS02 from the available pool. This should aid in services re-terminating quickly on LNS01.

UPDATE 02 – 22:00 We have shutdown our Telehouse North link, with traffic re-routing over to Telehouse East as expected

At the above time today, we will be replacing 1 line card in each of the above cores with a newer revision to facilitate an update on LNS01 & LNS02.

Any traffic on these cards will be re-routed to there backup counterpart . No outage is expected however a drop in call traffic may be observed.This devices should be considered at risk until complete.

UPDATE01 – 09:55
Work has been undertaken to re-route traffic on CORE02. As expected we have seen a small drop in call traffic. We apologize for any inconvenience caused. Traffic will need to be re-routed, however will be done at a time when call levels are lower.

UPDATE01 – 11:30
Work has been completed on both cores and any primary services reconnected.

We have been advised of planned network maintenance by one of our primary transit providers (Adapt) This work is due to retirement of access41.lon2 and the need to move the network equipment into new core cabinet within Goswell Road.

We have been advised works will start at 20:00 and continue on until 04:00 on the 16th. We take multiple feeds from adapt for transit and have been advised of service disruption while these are physically relocated to the new device of up to 20 minutes. Although we take multiple redundant feeds, we have been advised of disruption due to network re-convergence on there side.

Our network is comprised of multiple redundant routes to different carriers. Should we loose our Adapt link for any reason then traffic will automatically re-route with minimal disruption.

This work wont affect phone services as these route in to our network via interdependent private interconnects unless you connect in to our network via a 3rd party connection. If this is the case you may need to restart your handsets after the maintenance works has been completed.

UPDATE01 – 16/10/2015
This work completed without issue from our supplier. Our network reacted as expected and re-routed traffic where required.

Between 20:00 & 20:30 we will be installing a new version of our mail server on EasyHTTP. IMAP, SMTP & POP will be unavailable during this maintenance window.

UPDATE 01 – 20:19

This work is complete.

During this window we will be upgrading our bonded platform to the latest software version as per our software vendors recommendation. Customers on the platform may notice drops in service while this takes place. Any customer using the service with our EasyIPT VOIP solution may notice there handsets fail to register with status lights remaining orange. If this occurs please power down all hardware for 5 minutes and power back up once the maintenance window is marked as complete.

UPDATE01 – 21:06
This work is complete.

In the above window we will be re-configuring BGP to provide a full IPv6 routing table to CORE03.LON01. No outage is expected, however as routing tables update within our network users may see routes change around our network.

In the above window we will be making changes to ACCESS01.lON01 converting this to our 3rd core device (CORE03.LON01) We will then be expanding BGP to the device to provide a full IPv4 routing table. No outage is expected, however as routing tables update within our network users may see routes changes around our network.

UPDATE 01
This work was part prosponed due to enginner avalibity and will take place on Friday along with the IPv6 works.

In the above maintenance window we will be adding IPv6 support back to ACCESS01.LON01 after its removal during our previous network upgrades. We will also be enabling IPv6 on CORE02.LON01 to support IPv6 on our upcoming DSL network. IPv6 is already available on CORE01.LON01 for directly connected services and leased line circuits.

No disruption is expected to IPv4 traffic or the network general.

UPDATE 01 – 19:00
Engineers have started the works.

UPDATE 02 – 19:50
IPv6 BGP sessions to our primary peer “Adapt” have been established along with our tertiary peer “Zen” Prefixes are being received on CORE01.lON01. A BGP session will now be created between CORE01.LON & CORE02.LON01

UPDATE 03 – 20:30
A BGP session between CORE01.LON & CORE02.LON01 has been created and is now in testing.

UPDATE 04 – 20:45
Testing has completed OK, however there is a problem with routing traffic to both Adapt & Zen. We are unable to pass IPv6 traffic to Adapt and we are not receiving a default route from Zen. Tickets have been raised with each carrier. At this moment in time we are not passing IPv6 traffic due to this fault. If a quick resolve is not provided then we will drop the effected peers.

UPDATE 05 – 21:20
While waiting for responses from upstream peers, we continued to investigate and discovered the ranges we where testing with where not announced within our internal V6 BGP session due to the use of a GRE tunnel. Network statements have been added and traffic is flowing via Adapt without issue from our test locations. No traffic loss would have been seen other than from our test locations and retract the previous statement about not passing traffic. We are still awaiting a response from Zen.

UPDATE 06 – 21:45
Due to time lost we have suspended the integration of ACCESS01.LON01. While technically there is less work to complete on this and could be completed within the window. We feel this should be rescheduled to avoid human error given this late hour and the concentration required when its comes to BGP!