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Gigafast 900 outages & downtime saga

sywilkin
2: Seeker
2: Seeker

‎29-01-2022 10:25 AM

I moved to VF Gigafast 900 in Reading on 6th Jan 2022. Install went smoothly & I was initially delighted at speed tests of around 800Mbs up & down. But then the problems began. Here is the saga and some things to look at if you're thinking about VF Gigafast service.

 

My first outage was after only 12 hours & was down for just under 2 weeks. It went down again yesterday after working OK for about 10 days. I am expecting it to be down for at least 3 or more days due to VF L3 support working hours.

 

My support experience went like this.

  1. Escalation quickly from helpdesk to l2 support and up to l3 vodafone support (as they eliminate cabling issues, user error & do many factory-resets & restarts etc)
  2. I did run some PCAP's that indicated the "PADI" was not being processed by the VF server (this info was ignored by VF until day 12)
  3. The case was then batted between l3 Vodafone & Cityfibre support many times (each claimed it was the other's issue). You should know that the SLA for each move is 24-48 hours meaning each time it moves from VF to Cityfibre & back it adds 24 hours to your downtime.
  4. You need to ask specific questions to get responses. Like "Can VF / CityFibre see the PADI messages from my router?". The answer - in my case - "Yes", So it is not the router, not ONT, not cabling...
  5. Finally, they asked for my PCAP files (which were identical PPPoE errors for the 2 x VF + Draytek routers by the way). The problem was resolved 24 hours later. A coincidence perhaps?

My current outage is once again is at L3 support. The same errors on my Draytek - The "PPPoE server is not responding"

 

Those who are looking at this article if trying to decide whether to go for VF / CityFibre service:

 

1) The service appears to be quite "fragile"

2) The people who can really fix these issues (the L3 guys) only work Monday-Friday and operate on a minimum 24 hr service level for turnaround. So if you are lucky enough to have a failure on a Friday, do not expect it to be fixed until at least Monday/ possibly Tuesday

 

Service availability stats for my internet for the (almost) first month 43% uptime. Caviat Emptor!

 

 

10 REPLIES 10

sywilkin
2: Seeker
2: Seeker
In response to Jayach

‎03-02-2022 04:08 PM

Thanks, @Jayach. A much better response going via complaints line. Still spent 1hour 50 mins on the phone & I think they finally figured out the root of the issue. So I'm based in Reading & CityFibre, for some reason, provisioned my connection on Leeds POP.

 

My 2nd outage, that started on Friday, was because someone crashed a car into the cabinet in Leeds. I was told all the customers were back up & CF closed the case (nice of them to ask if my line was up). Am kinda thinking that when they rebuilt the stack/line cards, some config/routing settings got missed off.

 

So they're now working out how to handle the issue of getting it back up.

Option 1. Cease Leeds POP & provision a new line in Reading POP; a 14-day turnaround!!

Option 2. A question to them, "I still have the old BT landline. Could they turn that on while option 1 wends its way through their processes" - yes but it would take 14 days as that is OpenReach's SLA

Option 3. Nuclear on my part (but not really doable). Cancel the service & go back to slow, but reliable BT.... guess what on timings (OpenReach again). Yes, 14 days once more.

 

So I guess I'm stuck with potentially 2 weeks more without the decent service (yes I'm getting a heady 6Mbs down, 750Kbs up on the 4G backup dongle) .

 

I may be lucky and they find a way of doing this more quickly, but suspect not.

 

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