Blueface down

kevinmcc

Anyone else having issues making outgoing calls all evening on blueface? Have been trying to call out since 6.30pm and keep getting a message that the number I am calling is deactivated.

FSL

Same here. Speaking clock is working but no other calls.

dahamsta

Reports on the forum too. I've been having intermittent problems registering for several days now. Going to look for an alternative, like I should have the last time they had ANOTHER major outage.

Merjock

Have to say, I've had no problems making or receiving calls over the past few days.

dolandy

I find them pretty good to be fair. "Number deactivated" message yesterday evening was the first issue in probably a year.

Im not saying that this is the way it is; more out of curiousity but.....

Do you think blueface suffer their reputation due to things out of their control, i.e. broadband carrier, peoples own setup etc.??

Just wondering because some people are saying that service/customer service is not up to scratch, but I couldnt be happier.

cheers

Ian

dahamsta

I think they suffer from someone in there that doesn't understand some of the basics of networking. Do a search on their forum for "nameservers" -- I've asked them to move one of their nameservers to a different netblock now several times, and I've all but been ignored.

Nameservers on different netblocks are a fundamental of good network design, and they were directly responsible for the sheer scale of two of their big outages last year. If they had fixed it the first time I told them, some of their services would have continued to run.

Their lead support rep has a horrible manner too. He means well and there's very little doubt in my mind it's a culture thing, but he doesn't understand the concept of apologising to a customer, and regularly throws blame back on the customer. (Even if the customer is wrong, you don't throw it at them, it's bad for business.)

edanto

dahamsta wrote: »

Nameservers on different netblocks are a fundamental of good network design, and they were directly responsible for the sheer scale of two of their big outages last year. If they had fixed it the first time I told them, some of their services would have continued to run.

This is still the case.

Currently, the blueface nameservers are on the same netblock

NS1.BLUEFACE.IE 194.213.29.22 NS1.BLUEFACE.IE 194.213.29.22
NS2.BLUEFACE.IE 194.213.29.23 NS2.BLUEFACE.IE 194.213.29.23

I don't know a huge amount about networking. What kind of issues would changing them to different netblocks avoid?

Also - do they have any literature on their failover systems that you know about (I've asked them as well!)

dahamsta

As it stands, if 194.213.29.* becomes inaccessible, all of Blueface's equipment that uses hostnames instead of IP addresses (sip.blueface.ie, for example) becomes inaccessible*, even if it's hosted in a different location. If one of the nameservers is hosted in another location, it will still be able to answer queries and translate hostnames to IP addresses (or vice-versa), and equipment in other locations will still work.

Of course if ALL of Blueface's equipment is hosted on the same network as both of the nameservers, then that's a whole other ballgame altogether and rather than being given a rap on the knuckles and sent on a course, the network engineer responsible should be taken outside and shot.

Distributed DNS is a fundamental though. You can look at the DNS records for any major web service provider to confirm this.

* For pedantry's sake, there are exceptions in the cases of cached hostnames. These will expire in time though.

salesjobs.ie

Our main business line down, cant ring between staff, cant make calls out, business has stopped dead.

Can't get through to their own main line either, no email from them informing of what problem is or how long they might be down over an hour now between up, then down etc.

A company this size should really have a better quick fix / disaster recovery plan in place, lord knows I send enough prospects/sales their way.

FSL

No problems with mine either making or receiving calls.

prof_frink_2000

salesjobs.ie wrote: »

Our main business line down, cant ring between staff, cant make calls out, business has stopped dead.

Can't get through to their own main line either, no email from them informing of what problem is or how long they might be down over an hour now between up, then down etc.

A company this size should really have a better quick fix / disaster recovery plan in place, lord knows I send enough prospects/sales their way.

I emailed them and got this reply, also got them on the phone:

We have been experiencing some issues with calls intermittently this afternoon again which our engineers are working to resolve at present. We hope to have this issue resolved shortly for all affected customers, some customers are back up and running fully now.

We sincerely apologise for any inconvenice that this has caused.

Mr. G

prof_frink_2000 wrote: »

I emailed them and got this reply, also got them on the phone:

We have been experiencing some issues with calls intermittently this afternoon again which our engineers are working to resolve at present. We hope to have this issue resolved shortly for all affected customers, some customers are back up and running fully now.

We sincerely apologise for any inconvenice that this has caused.

Working fine for us now. Could barely use the phone today, hit and miss really.

This is happening way too often. Only thing is, that when we use a different unknown supplier that has barely any downtime, nobody can confirm with others..

msmx5

Mr_Grumpy wrote: »

Working fine for us now. Could barely use the phone today, hit and miss really.

Yeah, I noticed issues today too, not persistently but occasionally with both incoming and outgoing calls. Also noticed it to a lesser extent yesterday. Fingers crossed the issues can be addressed and mitigated with improved infrastructure and fault detection procedures at Blueface.

I was initially suspecting my internet connection even though it has been fairly bulletproof over the last few years, but some initial diagnostics seemed to indicate my net connection was fine - as you mentioned it is useful to be able to come online here or the Blueface forum to be able to find out if there are know outages/issues with the service.

Blueface seems to have a large customer base (with many tech savy early adopters still conencted) so we tend to hear about issues more than I suspect we do with other VOIP providers.

How reliable are the other VOIP providers (inc the likes of UPC and Imagine)? Have other users experienced may outages?

Mr. G

msmx5 wrote: »

Yeah, I noticed issues today too, not persistently but occasionally with both incoming and outgoing calls. Also noticed it to a lesser extent yesterday. Fingers crossed the issues can be addressed and mitigated with improved infrastructure and fault detection procedures at Blueface.

I was initially suspecting my internet connection even though it has been fairly bulletproof over the last few years, but some initial diagnostics seemed to indicate my net connection was fine - as you mentioned it is useful to be able to come online here or the Blueface forum to be able to find out if there are know outages/issues with the service.

Blueface seems to have a large customer base (with many tech savy early adopters still conencted) so we tend to hear about issues more than I suspect we do with other VOIP providers.

How reliable are the other VOIP providers (inc the likes of UPC and Imagine)? Have other users experienced may outages?

I don't use UPC or imagine but I suspect they both use the same suppliers, mostly eircom wholesale etc. I haven't heard of UPC outages, but like you said, I guess we notice it a lot more as a lot of their users are tech savys.

I notice it was dropping a few calls yesterday evening, but now I can't make any calls at all with blueface, our inbound calls are also down completely.
We use another provider for calls during outages with blueface as we just set it up with our pbx today.

I also suspect, that if we had an eircom line, that we wouldn't be as frustrated, even though we pay them more and still get the same amount of outages with both!

Inevitable really...
Better be fixed tomorrow morning!

msmx5

macl wrote: »

Blueface on the blink for the last 24 hours. Bad service has become something more frequent of late.

Things still aren't fully back yet, their service certainly has had more "incidents" , service disruptions and outages recently.

What I find more worrying in one way is that they seem to be trying to gloss over the issues and give the impression that the situation is better than it actually is.

Their http://www.bluefacestatus.com/ status page has the headline "Service Restored" while just below they say "We are aware that some customers may still be experiencing intermittent issues" , a bit of a contradiction especially when the extent of the issues they described yesterday were limited to "some customers experiencing intermittent issues".

Things have NOT improved for me and it is very frustrating; tonight at approx 18:25, yesterday throughout the day and on Monday from 16:15, it has been hit and miss receiving calls at all, many calls have broken down mid call, and I could not always place a call. I don't think I can remember such a sustained period of poor service from Blueface since I signed up, ported in and used the service full time in 2005.

I have to say that I have been a very loyal customer and recommended the service to many others over the years but I am now beginning to re-evaluate other options. There is now plenty of choice and competition with many ISPs (especially) bundling a telephone service at a reasonable cost.

I am interested in how Blueface will respond, they seem to be concentrating on / targeting the business market solely now, and however difficult it was to convince my chatty wife to switch to Blueface (becoming even more difficult trying to convince her to stay recently) trying to convince businesses to become customers will become next to impossible as forums fill up with dissatisfied customers reporting outages and service disruptions on a more frequent basis.

Fingers crossed service will improve asap, I'm sure all at Blueface are doing their best

Mr. G

We use voip a lot for home, and a bit for business. I of course, like yourself try to convince the business to port to blueface. Now, it won't be blueface- another provider.

I still find eircom to be the worst, but until I hear an explanation from blueface and a clear apology from them, they are very close to being pushed of the cliff.

Luckily, we hadn't ported our main line yet, and I just setup an account with a different provider quickly and added it to the pbx.

Disgrace the way blueface phones service is on the blink.

malachy47

I don't know what happened to what was once an excellent service. I was speaking to an elderly person and suddenly silence. This happened at next dial too. I used my mobile phone the third time. They have gone to the dogs, I really, or rather, this elderly person really needed to communicate her doctor's appointments and Blueface let me down big time.

dubsaab

I have been unable to make outgoing calls all day. Was hanging on to blueface support for so long earlier that I left a message and sent an e-mail, but still no response or outgong service. Have been hanging on now for 46 minutes.
Their customer 'service' is a bit of a joke.

Mr. G

dubsaab wrote: »

I have been unable to make outgoing calls all day. Was hanging on to blueface support for so long earlier that I left a message and sent an e-mail, but still no response or outgong service. Have been hanging on now for 46 minutes.
Their customer 'service' is a bit of a joke.

Are you still having problems with Blueface? I found that the service was fine all day yesterday and today!

dubsaab

Mr_Grumpy wrote: »

Are you still having problems with Blueface? I found that the service was fine all day yesterday and today!

Yes, still having the same problem, cannot make calls but I can receive calls. In fairness, I had a call from Customer Service at 8.20 yesterday morning. They were unable to explain why the problem exists and said it would probably be Monday before it would be sorted out.

Mr. G

dubsaab wrote: »

Yes, still having the same problem, cannot make calls but I can receive calls. In fairness, I had a call from Customer Service at 8.20 yesterday morning. They were unable to explain why the problem exists and said it would probably be Monday before it would be sorted out.

Hmmm, are you sure its a blueface problem? Have you checked your sip accounts are correct, your broadband and equipment is working?

dubsaab

Mr_Grumpy wrote: »

Hmmm, are you sure its a blueface problem? Have you checked your sip accounts are correct, your broadband and equipment is working?

All my Sip accounts, broadband & equipment were fine. It was a Blueface issue which they sorted out today.

Mr. G

Good to hear its sorted.