UPDATE6 Unusual Internet Routing Problem Hits Sky Broadband Users

Customers of Sky Broadband (Fibre) are this morning reporting an unusual Internet routing or Domain Name System (DNS) related problem, which means that some websites and online servers work (e.g. IPv6 versions of Google, Facebook and YouTube) and many others (e.g. IPv4 sites) do not.

At the time of writing Sky, despite a huge influx of complaints that began at around 3am this morning, still has not acknowledged the problem and their support staff on Twitter claim they “can’t see any issues.” Never the less a quick look at the ISP’s Facebook and Twitter support feeds clearly show a problem, which appears to be popping up all over the UK.

In all cases the broadband service and router lights all report to have connected normally, yet when customers try to load most websites (except those highlighted above) and other online services they find themselves unable to do so. The fault appears to be related to Sky’s Internet routing rather than the customers hardware. Rebooting the router will make no difference.

UPDATE 8:23am

After several hours of complaining, Sky’s support team have finally acknowledged the problem. However their website’s Service Status page still reports no issues.

UPDATE 8:33am

A bit of checking with some local Sky Broadband customers reveals that the issue appears to be sporadic, with some customers able to use the Internet fairly normally (albeit apparently a bit slower than usual) and many others not. The groups we checked with were split between two different local telephone exchanges.

It’s separately been noted that Telecity (a major datacentre) had another power issue last night in their Harbour Exchange, which might potentially be related. Regular readers will recall that a similar group of incidents caused two days of Internet routing chaos last month (here).

UPDATE 9:02am

The fault appears to be predominantly affecting customers of Sky Fibre (FTTC / VDSL) based broadband packages rather than their older ADSL2+ using services. Sky’s official service status page now reflects this.

Sky Service Status Update

If you have Sky Fibre or Sky Fibre Unlimited in your home, you may not be able to get online at the moment. We’re investigating the fault now and we’re sorry for any inconvenience caused.

UPDATE 10:16am

We can confirm that Internet connectivity should be starting to return to normal, at least that seems to be what customers are reporting and is confirmed by our own local experience.

UPDATE 10:37am

A Sky spokesperson has now official said that the problem is “resolved” and they’ve also apologised for “any inconvenience caused.” Meanwhile we are still chasing Sky for a fuller explanation of what went wrong.

UPDATE 6:59pm

Sky informs us that they made some overnight “upgrades to our network“, which unfortunately impacted Sky Fibre customers’ ability to get online. It’s not clear what those upgrades were.