Posted: 01st Nov, 2003 By: MarkJ
Sadly we haven't heard back from Virgin.net regarding yesterdays news, although one of our readers (Gareth) has pointed us towards this service status update on the site:
1. ADSL Connectivity Issues -
Virgin.net would like to thank our customers for their continued patience over recent days with regards to our ADSL service. We announced on Monday 27th that we are aware of a performance related issue affecting our Broadband customers.
Since then we have been performing extensive work to identify the root cause and to bring about a speedy resolution. To that end we would like to update our customers on the current position and to reaffirm our commitment in providing the best possible service.
We have already made considerable changes in an attempt to enhance your service and you should soon see a general improvement. However, we realise that there is more to be done to bring the service back to the high standard you would expect from Virgin.net. O
ver the next 14 days we will be completing a massive upgrade which should resolve all outstanding issues, resulting in a much improved service. Once again, Virgin.net is committed to bringing you excellent Internet products at affordable prices and we thank you again for your patience.
2. Some customers may currently be experiencing problems with their PC arising from a Windows vulnerability resulting in a virus infection.
For more information on this please call our freephone suport line on 0800 052 4329. If you think your machine has been infected, please go to http://microsoft.com/ and click on the link on the top right hand side of the screen titled "Protect Your PC" This is caused by the virus or worm known as "Blaster" or "Welchia".
A known affect of these worms is that it has the potential to seriously degrade network performance. To combat this and to protect our service Virgin.net need to take action. We, along with a number of other ISP's, have temporarily blocked traffic associated with the Welchia worm (ICMP 8 - Echo) at our borders, this will prevent traffic generated by the worm from disrupting our equipment and services.
The result should be better performance for all of our customer and help to remove the threat in the long term. We will review this decision daily and will remove the block once we believe we can do so without adversely impacting on our customers. We would also recommend that all of our customers ensure they have up to date Anti Virus software.
More information on this can be found by browsing to this location, http://www.virgin.net/customers/virushelp/ We apologise for any inconvenience causedTypically a lot of those that have complained, as stated yesterday, made clear that they are competent PC users with common sense and have found no such infection(s) on their systems.