This is an update to last week's post about the ongoing speed and performance problems some of our customers are experiencing when the network is busy, a copy of the last announcement can be seen here - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259095584.htm

A summary of the recent problems can also be seen on our website here - http://www.plus.net/support/network_update.shtml

The network continues to operate under 'Plan A' operation and performance this week has been much better following the concerted efforts of our network engineers - http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/load.shtml

Since the last announcement we have carried out the following work:

* Upgraded the line cards used by two of our core routers to reduce low level packet loss when the network becomes busy - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259776555.htm

* Changed the 'virtual routing' for a number of customers to reduce congestion during peak times - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259680613.htm

* Upgraded two of the load balancers at one of our London data centres to help fix the intermittent DNS problems some customers have been experiencing - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259794367.htm

* Installed new software across one of the two sites used for our customer-facing DNS platform and changed the way the platform is load balanced. This is another piece of work that will fix the intermittent DNS problems some customers have been experiencing -

* Rolled out new traffic management signatures to improve streaming and more accurately identify traffic from download sites/servers - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259768966.htm

* Increased the capacity of the gateways at one of our London data centres.

* Rebuilt the gateway known as pcl-ag02.

* Lit another 155Mbps segment of central capacity meaning more bandwidth for customers- http://community.plus.net/blog/2009/11/26/plusnet-15-now-fully-lit/

* Migrated a number of customer across to our 21CN network to free up more capacity on the 20CN platform.

There have been a few problems:

Last Friday we experienced a hardware problem with the gateway known as pcl-ag02 and since this time the device has been out of service - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259322648.htm
Despite some initial teething problems we have managed to rebuild this gateway using replacement hardware and will be looking to reintroduce it over the coming weeks as we bring more capacity online.

The network was quickly brought back into balance following the problems with pcl-ag02 and remained that way until Thursday when we suffered the brief loss of another 622Mbps central pipe - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259862830.htm
This was due to some damaged fibre which was quickly replaced and the network brought back into balance.

Yesterday we had a brief data transfer problem which was related to the work to upgrade the load balancers at one of our data centres - http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1259843295.htm
This has since been fixed.

The network is now performing much better, especially following all the work that was carried out yesterday. We don't expect any significant problems over the weekend and you should find that things are performing well.

We're going to be monitoring things closely, and assuming all is well will be making some more changes over the coming weeks. Once this work is completed, we'll be looking to change Service Status back to 'Green'.

* Increase the capacity of the gateways at a second data centre in London.

* Make the DNS and load balancer changes at a second data centre in London.

* Introduce three extra traffic management switches to the network

We would like to offer our apologies again for the problems over recent weeks and will provide another update regarding the work that is yet to be completed next week.

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support