[LCH Announce] Degradation of network service 28/08/2005 00:40 BST onwards

[Phillip Baker]

Hello,

Due to the total failure of the equipment we connect to on KPN's London
routing platform at around 00:40 BST this morning we found ourselves
without full IP connectivity.

Initial attempts to load backup full table transits failed when it
was discovered that the providers we had alternative full IP routing
sessions configured for had disabled their side without alerting us.

We have since made temporary changes to our network infrastructure to
restore full IP connectivity by making emergency negotiations with an
existing partial transit provider to support the peculiar setup our
network presently requires.

We apologise profusely for this unfortunate series of problems which has
resulted in quite a long period of degraded and very brief periods of 
total loss in service. We believe that the network should now be 
globally visible and customer equipment should have no difficulties 
in reaching any hosts.

Customers may experience different (and hence possibly suboptimal)
routing and increased latency as a result of these emergency changes.
Normal service will be resumed as soon as KPN make reparations to their
network infrastructure.

We find that our hand is being forced into making rash decisions about
upgrading our network infrastructure and while we do not relish the
thought of making snap decisions about the network we may be forced to
upgrade our existing Cisco 7200 series routers rather than replace them
altogether with a different architecture in 6 to 12 months which was 
our current plan. We will keep you posted on any developments and
resulting network maintenance periods that may be required in order to
instigate these changes.

A further update will be sent once the network is back to it's normal
operating state.

Regards,
Phillip Baker
LCHost Chief Technical Officer
phil at lchost.co.uk