International connectivity problems for SA Internet users

Did you experience international connectivity problems today?

  • Yes

    Votes: 103 86.6%
  • No

    Votes: 16 13.4%

  • Total voters
    119
I can confirm that this was a major problem this morning at the school I work at, lots of sluggishness all round. Seems to be better now though. Can't wait till our ISP moves us onto Seacom bandwidth.
 
The office's Afrihost account is down, but mine works fine over a PPPoE connection. Really weird.
 
got a second notification stating it was a power outage in nigeria or some such rubbish.
 
Mine worked find until about 8:30. How the hell can they schedule downtime for 8:30 in the morning? I think someone is still on Australian time or something.
 
Our Afrihost is currently working, but it was down for a while earlier around 10 am.
 
yea right!!

IS didnt even know about this until their switchboard lit up and they finally admitted that there was a problem.

From IS:

Dear IS Customer

We are experiencing the following service event:

AFFECTED SERVICES: International Access & MPLS AFFECTED POPS: Traffic between SA and New York / London GRADE OF SERVICE IMPACT: Major SERVICE IMPACT: Intermittent connectivity CAUSE OF EVENT: Cause unknown
TIME: 2-2-10 08h42
OUR REF: N/A
CURRENT STATUS: Investigating
ATTENDING: Both IS and Telco engineers

Followed by:

Dear IS Customer

Telkom advise SAT3 traffic is on restoration path, with increased latency on INTL Access & MPLS services until primary path repaired.

No ETR available on the repair of the primary path. Telkom upstream service providers are attending.
 
I was wondering why my WOW ping was 1500, thought that my ISP had gone to the dogs.
 
No planned outage

This was certainly an unplanned outage. At about 9:30 this morning there were local sites which also were not responding. The notification from IS I got also shows unknown cause.

Surely a planned maintenance from Telkom on the SAT3 would have been known about by IS.

It created chaos for all users.
 
I am getting so gatvol of getting ***ked out in the morning when my phone doesnt stop with "my fuxing internet is down again!!!!!!! we are changing ISP's if this ever happens again!" ... and trying to explain the most of SA is affected doesnt help.
 
Ermmm...

This was yesterday morning between 9:30-10am & 1pm roughly.

12:37 Update - Estimated time to repair
Dark Fiber Africa have advised that due to the extensive nature of the repair work required, the estimated time to repair is approximately 45 minutes.

Previous message:
There is currently a fibre break between Mtunzini and Umhlanga on the SEACOM Backhaul from the Landing Station.
This is causing a complete outage of all international traffic. The fault has been reported to Dark Fiber Africa and fibre technicians are attending to the fault.

So SAT-3 today, SEACOM yesterday.. Clearly It's a hazardous world out there for submarine cables.
 
This is what I was sent.

Major Undersea Cable Break
Email Server, UC; Enterprise Voice; Corpnet Access; Internet, Internal site and tools

Description

A major undersea cable break between the continents of Africa and Europe is affecting Internet access throughout South Africa as of today 2nd February at 9:15am.

Telkom South Africa have begun restoration of the undersea cable but are unable to determine a time of resolution as yet. Updates will follow.
 
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