Stafford IT Services

Planned 21CN Broadband Network Maintenance–Wednesday 28th July 2.00am-6.00am

Darren McCarthy — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:05:53 GMT

When's this work happening?

Early tomorrow morning, 28th July.

What does it affect?

The routing of broadband traffic across BT Wholesale's network.

How long will it take?

Up to four hours.

What does the work involve?

We have received notice from our suppliers about a period of planned engineering works that is scheduled to be carried out early tomorrow morning.

Am I likely to notice the work?

Our suppliers have advised that some broadband customers may experience a five minute outage at some point during the maintenance window.

Is there anything else I need to know?

Any customers having problems connecting once the maintenance is complete are advised to switch off their equipment for 30 minutes before powering it back up and attempting to reconnect.

Planned Network Maintenance - Tuesday 27th July 10.00am-12.00pm

Darren McCarthy — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:12:57 GMT

When's this work happening?

Tomorrow morning, 27th July.

What does it affect?

The routing of broadband customers' Internet traffic.

How long will it take?

About two hours.

What does the work involve?

To facilitate growth of the network we will be creating additional 'virtual routers' to handle our customers' Internet traffic.

Am I likely to notice the work?

Possibly. When connected to pcl-ag01 you may notice the new virtual routers referenced when running a traceroute from your network. The new virtual routers are called 'central1', 'central2' and 'central3'.

Is there anything else I need to know?

No.

Listening to feedback

Darren McCarthy — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:46:41 GMT

We have listened users feed back who say they often forget to put the “s” in the https part of the address for the webmail.

We have no introduced a re-direct so if you forget to put in “s” in the webmail address it will add it for you.

As a reminder the webmail address is:

https://mail.carefreemail.co.uk

Bing is ready for Windows Phone 7

Darren McCarthy — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:37:25 GMT

Well Bing is ready for Windows 7 phone I hope you are…as they images are simply fab…I think I am starting to want one.

http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/search/archive/2010/07/22/fired-up-for-windows-phone-7.aspx

Planned 21CN Broadband Network Maintenance - Friday 23rd July 2.00am-6.00am

Darren McCarthy — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:28:44 GMT

What does it affect?

The routing of broadband traffic across BT Wholesale's network.

How long will it take?

Up to four hours.

What does the work involve?

We have received notice from our suppliers about a period of planned engineering works that is scheduled to be carried out early tomorrow morning.

Am I likely to notice the work?

Our suppliers have advised that some broadband customers may experience a five minute outage at some point during the maintenance window.

Is there anything else I need to know?

Any customers having problems connecting once the maintenance is complete are advised to switch off their equipment for 30 minutes before powering it back up and attempting to reconnect.

Microsoft Updates the social connectors

Darren McCarthy — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 04:11:17 GMT

There’s an excellent post over at liveside.net about the new connectors that Microsoft have just released for Outlook 2007 and 2010.

I have been using the connectors for some time now and they really add to Outlook. So you are a facebook junkie and/or social network junkie then the update is really cool.

http://www.liveside.net/main/archive/2010/07/13/outlook-social-connector-update-here-s-the-links.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+liveside+%28LiveSide%29

Microsoft Outlook Connector for Facebook and & WLM

Darren McCarthy — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 04:04:03 GMT

Microsoft Outlook Social Connector Provider for Windows Live Messenger
Connect your Windows Live ID to the Outlook Social Connector and stay up to the minute with the people in your network by accessing everything from e-mail threads to status updates in one single, centralized view.

Microsoft Outlook Social Connector Provider for Facebook
Connect your Facebook account to the Outlook Social Connector and stay up to the minute with the people in your network by accessing everything from e-mail threads to status updates in one single, centralized view.

Download:
Microsoft Outlook Social Connector Provider for Windows Live Messenger
Microsoft Outlook Social Connector Provider for Facebook

SSL Cert Swap

Darren McCarthy — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 03:05:46 GMT

When's this work happening?

8pm onwards, 26th July.

What does it affect?

All SSL certs on all systems will be renewed

How long will it take?

Up to four hours.

What does the work involve?

We have to renew our SSL certs on all of our mail servers

Am I likely to notice the work?

No you should not notice any difference

Is there anything else I need to know?

Any customers having problems connecting once the maintenance is complete are advised to close outlook for 30 minutes before powering it back up and attempting to reconnect.

New Xbox 360 Family Package

Darren McCarthy — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:54:34 GMT

Its about time that MS got the idea with this one.

“An Xbox LIVE Gold Family Pack includes:

* Up to four individual Xbox LIVE Gold memberships for the price of two – (US) $99.99.
* Family Center – a single, easy to use, destination for Family Settings and account management, accessible on the Xbox dashboard and on Xbox.com.
* The primary account member has the ability to purchase and dispense Microsoft Points to other Xbox LIVE Gold Family Pack members.
* Activity monitoring reports viewable on Xbox.com to help encourage discussions about safer more balanced gaming and entertainment habits.
* Simplified billing that applies all purchase charges to the primary account holder's billing account and the ability to authorize purchases, helping to manage the family's entertainment budget.
* Exclusive family content and discounts.

The industry-leading, built-in Xbox 360 Family Settings are also being taken to the next level this November. It's Microsoft's goal to provide parents and caregivers with tools and resources to manage their children's gaming and entertainment experiences, and these features are available to all Xbox LIVE members:

* Family Programming that removes all mature games, movies, and content from the dashboard, based on ESRB, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings and the TV Parental Guidelines system . Family Programming is password protected, and easy to turn on and off for each member. (Compatible with international ratings systems.)
* Title exceptions – the ability to allow your family members to play specific games above the console's designated ESRB rating if you deem appropriate. (Compatible with international ratings systems.)
* Intelligent default settings for child, teen, and adult profiles. Xbox will automatically assign default privacy and activity settings for each member that can later be individually customized.
* Family Settings are displayed prominently in the MyXbox channel. Current tools include the Family Timer, which allows you to control the amount of time - either daily or weekly - your children may use the console.”

Planned 21CN Broadband Network Maintenance - Wednesday 14th July 2.00am-6.00am

Darren McCarthy — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:02:02 GMT

When's this work happening?

Early tomorrow morning, 14th July.

What does it affect?

The routing of broadband traffic across BT Wholesale's network.

How long will it take?

Up to four hours.

What does the work involve?

We have received notice from our suppliers about a period of planned engineering works that is scheduled to be carried out early tomorrow morning.

Am I likely to notice the work?

Our suppliers have advised that some broadband customers will experience a five minute outage at some point during the maintenance window.

Is there anything else I need to know?

Any customers having problems connecting once the maintenance is complete are advised to switch off their equipment for 30 minutes before powering it back up and attempting to reconnect.

E-Mail Delivery

Darren McCarthy — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:31:57 GMT

We experienced an issue with our internal routers this morning which has caused issues with delivery of mail and access to the mail services. Our apologies for this. We are still monitoring the issue as some customers are still reporting issues with delivery of e-mail.

Connector Update

Darren McCarthy — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 08:55:36 GMT

We are upgrading the connectors today ready for the start of business tomorrow morning.

Kerio Outlook Connector (Offline Edition)
- Fixed mapping of shared mailboxes in Microsoft Outlook 2010.
- Kerio Outlook Connector auto-configuration tool sometimes didn't work correctly with Microsoft Outlook 2010.

Broadband Connectivity Issues

Darren McCarthy — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:26:33 GMT

This is an update to yesterday evening's post regarding a Major Service Outage at the Manchester node. This may have caused connectivity and authentication problems for people in the North West of England.

We are glad to advise that service has been restored and anyone previously affected by this issue should now be able to connect as normal.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Telephone Routing

Darren McCarthy — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:07:59 GMT

We are experiencing issues in routing some calls through our VOIP platforms we will let you know more information as we progress this issue.

Choose Opera - Download new version of Opera

Darren McCarthy — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:31:14 GMT

Choose Opera - Download new version of Opera

New Opera 10.60

Broadband Connectivity

Darren McCarthy — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 03:31:57 GMT

We are currently receiving reports of a general Major Service Outage at the Edinburgh node. This may be causing connectivity and authentication problems for some customers in Scotland and the North of England.

Our wholesale suppliers are currently investigating this at the highest priority, and we will provide further updates as soon as we have them.

Network Outage

Darren McCarthy — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:51:20 GMT

When's this work happening?

Early Monday morning, 28th June.

How long will it take?

Up to three hours.

What does the work involve?

We have received notice from our suppliers about a period of planned engineering works that is scheduled to be carried out early Monday morning.

Am I likely to notice the work?

Our suppliers have advised that some customers may experience up to three hours downtime between Midnight and 6.00am on the morning in question.

Is there anything else I need to know?

The last time similar engineering works was carried out we didn't see any customer impact.

New Windows Live Essentials

Darren McCarthy — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 03:09:56 GMT

The new Windows Live Essentials is almost out…and the new features really look cool

A cool little video that helps you understand some of the changes:

This will be available here

Web Speeds – Now Resolved

Darren McCarthy — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:38:41 GMT

Guess what…the England match is over. Web speeds have now returned to normal

Web Speeds

Darren McCarthy — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:08:38 GMT

We have three different 'settings' for our automated network management solution according to the conditions the network is under - Plan A (normal operation), Plan B (high demand operation) and Plan C (disaster situation)

In response to the high levels of streaming traffic being seen on the network due to the England vs. Slovenia match, we have taken the decision to move to 'Plan B' operation.

This means that your Internet connection may be slowed so that we can preserve the integrity of time sensitive traffic like gaming, VoIP and general web browsing.

We expect that we will be in a position to restore the network to its original configuration later this afternoon.

Outlook 2010 Support Issue

Darren McCarthy — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:04:43 GMT

If you are running Outlook 2010 please do not enable conversation view as this may lead to Outlook 2010 to crash.

At the moment we have no working fix to this issue.

Power Supply Interruption

Darren McCarthy — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 06:02:01 GMT

Please note that all e-mail servers will be down during the following hours:

Date

23/6/10

Time

21:00 thru 22:00

How does it affect me?

You will not be able to gain access to any new mail or access webmail servers during the outage.

Do I need to do anything?

When your mail server becomes available again outlook will automatically re-connect

Will I loose any e-mail?

We apologise for any issues regarding this work.

Archiving for compliance and governance

Darren McCarthy — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 03:29:51 GMT

We have listen to your feedback and requests for the ability to better recover and store all e-mail conversations for audit purposes.

We have completed our rollout of the archive servers. These servers now provide full archiving of all inbound and outbound messages before anti-spam measures.

This also acts as a buffer to ensure that even if the spam filters have removed a message it will always be in the archive. To make a request for a message out of the archive please complete a help request as normal.

DSL Disconnections

Darren McCarthy — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 12:36:17 GMT

At around 5.45pm this afternoon we experienced a problem that disconnected broadband customers connected to the gateway known as pcl-ag04.

This will have affected customers connected to both our 20CN (Up to 8Mbps) and 21CN (Up to 20Mbps) networks.

If you were disconnected then you should have been able to get straight back online. Some customers with routers that don't handle these situations very gracefully may need to reboot their equipment.

There will have been further disconnects following the initial drop as we reloaded the affected gateway and then forced disconnections on some of our other edge routers to help balance sessions across the platform.

If you are still experiencing problems getting back online then please try powering down your modem/router for 20 minutes before trying again.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this issue.

Planned Network Maintenance

Darren McCarthy — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:19:16 GMT

When's this work happening?
Early tomorrow morning, 18th June.

What does it affect?
The routing of broadband traffic across BT Wholesale's network.

How long will it take?
Up to four hours.

What does the work involve?
BT will be making changes to the routing of IP traffic at one of their Manchester PoP's - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_presence

Am I likely to notice the work?
The work isn't expected to cause any disconnections, although a small amount of packet loss may be experienced at the time the routing changes. This packet loss isn't expected to last much longer than a minute.

Is there anything else I need to know?
No.