Full Fibre Broadband ISP Toob Partially Resolves Network Outage UPDATE
Hampshire-based network builder and gigabit broadband ISP toob, which is rolling out its own Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across parts of South England, claims to have “fixed” a major network outage that began during the small hours of this morning and only began to subside an hour or so ago. But issues are ongoing in Southampton.
The internet provider, which has been criticised for taking several hours to acknowledge that an outage was occurring, notes that the problems disrupted internet connectivity for customers in Camberley, Aldershot, Farnborough, Ash Vale and Mytchett. The unspecified fault has now been fixed in those areas, but it seems like customers in Southampton continue to be impacted (it’s unclear whether this is directly related to the first fault).
According to toob’s support page: “If you are in these areas and still experiencing network issues, please reboot your router and fibre box by turning them off and on again. We’re aware of an issue impacting some of our service in Southampton. We are continuing to investigate the cause and will provide an update as soon as we know more.”
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So far as we can recall, this appears to be the first large-scale outage on toob’s network. Previous service disruptions have tended to me more localised (routine). The ISP is also posting updates to X/Twitter (here).
UPDATE 14th Feb 2024 @ 9:27am
We’ve had a statement from toob that provides a bit more detail on the cause of the problem. The ISP deserves some credit here for providing more information than we’d normally expect for such events.
A spokesperson from toob said:
“We experienced a failure to a core switch in one of our data centres overnight. This should not have affected our customers; however, the failure had a broader impact to our network and some of our customers lost connectivity. Our engineers identified the issue and restored the service as quickly as possible. Most affected customers had their service restored this morning with the issues finally being resolved this afternoon.
We will continue to monitor the service carefully over the coming days to ensure it is stable while we investigate the root cause of the issue. We understand how important a reliable internet service is and we sincerely apologise to our customers for the inconvenience this incident has caused.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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It makes you wonder how much redundancy these Alt Nets providers have.
With such rapid roll-out, priorities may not be focused on “what if” scenarios.
On a side note, they are installing in my area Locks Heath. Roadworks popping up all over the place. Nothing shown on their coverage map.
You could just as easily level that criticism at many of the bigger and more established providers. But there are limits (economic viability) to redundancy and if you want greater reliability then it often means paying extra for a premium business connection or private circuit, although even those will not be able to 100% prevent all outages.
Yes their map has a big void of nothingness for locks heath, warsash and Whiteley. Sounds promising though.
@Rob
Last week Toob installed around Park Gate, and also dropped in a cabinet just outside Locks Heath Centre on the roundabout. Openreach are also installing fibre in the streets, so looks like a race is on.
Customers who care about uptime really should take redundant connections from completely separate providers, ideally using diverse routes. My home router automatically flips from AltNet FTTP to EE 4G in the event of packet loss.
@Stuart
Very strange that its not on their maps as they appear to have jumped the Future Build, In Design and gone straight to the In Build phase. It’s good news though I guess although I doubt they will make it into the Whiteley bubble but who knows if they aren’t updating the maps.
Anyway I’m 1 week into being Virgin Media less and relying on Three 5g from the mast next to the Scania garage in Segendsworth. The week where Three seem to be quite flakey! Fortunately only experienced one glitch and that was today.
Agreed. Gets what you pay for generally, although Toob offers a premium business connection. More than double the price. I doubt that helped any businesses on Toob in this indecent.
Still down.
I love people on X and DE complaining online that they are cutoff from internet, and businesses loosing money because of that. If I had online business I would want to have a back up connection.
just like if I was a Taxi driver, I would have courtesy car on my insurance for obvious reasons.
Seems to be back following a second partial outage in the GU14 area.
This morning ONT was showing all good, but I was not getting an IP assigned to my router.
Outage this afternoon found some IPs and hosts could resolve and others seemingly not. Didnt look to be DNS.
Terrible comms from them on it other than a text message at 7am to say there is an outage and nothing since.
Unable to call their support line, just beeps ends.
Logging a ticket on their web portal has not been responded to all day either.
Hi,Toob Internet still not working in Camberley Area. Received only 1 text at 7am this morning and nothing since. Internet started to work at noon, but not working again.
Can someone confirm toob has a 24*7 support model. The telephone onlynis active at 8am. Can someone confirm what happens if internet outage at 11pm. Do we have to wait until office opens at 8am?
Just had the following email from toob regarding the outage:
—————————-
Hello Nick,
This morning some customers experienced an issue with their internet connectivity. Our network suffered a failure to one of our switches in one of our data centres. This should have automatically failed-over, however the failure had a broader effect on our network and some customers lost connectivity.
Our engineers identified the issue and worked to restore service as quickly as possible. Whilst this was resolved quickly for some, others experienced a longer disruption to service. We recognise the loss of service as being very frustrating, for which we sincerely apologise.
Service has now been fully restored and your broadband will now be operating normally. If you are seeing any further issues connecting to your broadband service, please reboot the fibre box and router by powering them off and back on again. If this does not resolve any connection issue, please give our team a call on 023 9300 9300.
We understand all too well how important a reliable internet service is and we sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this incident has caused. We are carrying out a full review to understand and rectify any causes of the incident as well as ensuring resilience is maintained.
Thank you for your understanding and please be assured that we are committed to providing you the best broadband possible.
Kind regards,
team toob
@Stuart
Looking at the Better Internet Dashboard https://bidb.uk/ it appears there are lots of purple marks on the map for toob in Locks Heath and Parkgate