dslreports logo
 
    All Forums Hot Topics Gallery
spc
Search similar:


uniqs
2233

Pinan

join:2000-09-02
Murrieta, CA

Pinan

Phone Power partial outage....

..as confirmed by their CSR's, though not on the Network Status Page (uhhh). I have no incoming calls. Outgoing is fine.

topgun
join:2011-01-31

topgun

Member

Incoming calls working for me just fine PP is usually very quick so you should always wait at least 15 minutes before posting an outage.

PhonePower
Premium Member
join:2007-07-20
Winnetka, CA

2 edits

PhonePower to Pinan

Premium Member

to Pinan
There was/is an issue with an upstream CLEC affecting inbound calls to less than 1% of our clients. Of course if you're in the 1% your inbound is 100% down. The numbers have come up and or are coming up as their database rebuilds. Incoming calls are affected, but our network is up and working and everyone should be able to make outgoing calls and remain registered.

We always post major outages immediately.

UPDATE: All clients affected clients should be working again.

Pinan

join:2000-09-02
Murrieta, CA

Pinan

Great. I was in the 1%. Why did calls not go to VM instead of just endless ringing or "the number you have reached...."? Not good.

topgun
join:2011-01-31

topgun

Member

I can't answer that but maybe PP can. Not good? So PP had a minor outage any phone service can have an outage in a years time... You pay 20.00 or less for phone service and that is a big deal? Guess my priorities are messed up, lol...

As stated before if you need the 5 nines or you run a business where up time need to be 100% then you need to have a contingency plan. Even 911 has multiple phone providers including cellular backups.

Pinan

join:2000-09-02
Murrieta, CA

1 edit

Pinan

said by topgun:

You pay 20.00 or less for phone service and that is a big deal? Guess my priorities are messed up, lol...

I didn't say it was catastrophic, just not good. With all of the backup plans and forwarding available it would have been nice to have a faster reaction. I was down for several hours.

On a business line this would have been uncomfortable to say the least. Yes, I was surprised that failover did not work.

Fwiw: I waited for an hour before I posted about the outage....

ptrowski
Got Helix?
Premium Member
join:2005-03-14
Woodstock, CT

ptrowski to topgun

Premium Member

to topgun
said by topgun:

Incoming calls working for me just fine PP is usually very quick so you should always wait at least 15 minutes before posting an outage.

That's absurd and a silly thing to recommend. An outage is an outage and should be reported so PhonePower can research it. I also commend PhonePower for their fantastic record this year.

As for price, there is a difference between something being "cheap" versus "inexpensive". I look at PhonePower as being inexpensive, not cheap. So yes I would say your priorities are messed up.
ptrowski

1 recommendation

ptrowski to Pinan

Premium Member

to Pinan
Pinan, failover will kick in when your ISP or power is out, etc but when the issue is one the VoIP providers side you will not get failover. It works that way for most providers.

Pinan

join:2000-09-02
Murrieta, CA

1 recommendation

Pinan

said by ptrowski:

Pinan, failover will kick in when your ISP or power is out, etc but when the issue is one the VoIP providers side you will not get failover. It works that way for most providers.

Doh. Thank you ptrowski.

*Sheepishly thinking I should have known that.

ptrowski
Got Helix?
Premium Member
join:2005-03-14
Woodstock, CT

ptrowski

Premium Member

No worries at all! I found that out the hard way years ago working from home using VoIP.

topgun
join:2011-01-31

4 edits

topgun to ptrowski

Member

to ptrowski
Sorry Pinan I was under the impression it was a quick mini outage When did you first notice it? I'm sure PP was well aware of the outage regardless of who posted about it here. Remember most people don't know about DSLR and called well before Pinan did. As PP mentioned it was a problem with a CLEC so like any other company they would have a monitor setup and probably knew about it before the phones started ringing. Just like I have monitors setup for certain exchange servers and know within a minute if one goes down.

Not like PP can put a gun to their heads and be like "fix this now"! So this is definitely something beyond their control and should be treated as such.

P.S. To everyone...never ever run a business on a VoIp without redundancy there are to many points of failure. This has been discussed many times over!

PhonePower
Premium Member
join:2007-07-20
Winnetka, CA

1 edit

PhonePower to Pinan

Premium Member

to Pinan
Let me begin by apologizing about yesterday's events. As stated, an upstream CLEC (these are phone companies that bring the call to our switch) was having some issues and was not routing incoming calls to less than 1% of our clients. Once notified, they rebuilt a database that was relatively slow in rebuilding. During this process clients were coming up one at a time as they got rebuilt. Some were down for minutes, some for a few hours. We did not put a network status alerts as that is a tool we use to slow down incoming calls to our call center due to large scale known issues to keep from being inundated. Our staff was easily able to give one on one service while keeping hold times to a maximum of 5 minutes all day yesterday.

This was a 3rd party telco outage. Nothing in the outage was due to a Phone Power system or process failure. Of course as your service provider, we take full responsibility for you inconvenience. Our switch was 100% operational as evidenced by the fact that you were registered and able to make calls. If the call would get to the PP switch, then there would be no need failover or VM, we would simply have made your end device ring. To reiterate this a was telco issue and not a Phone Power system problem. The calls were simply not being presented to us for processing.

I understand that services outages can be aggravating, but I do want to remind you that Phone Power's core network received massive improvements last year and is going on 7 months @ 100% up-time and had a total downtime of ~60 minutes in 2010. That puts us in the ring with the best of the best as far as uptime is concerned.

I hope this helps to clarify some of your concerns. Thanks for choosing PP.

Pinan

join:2000-09-02
Murrieta, CA

Pinan

Thank you PP.

So what would be the best way to cimcumvent an outage of this type if VM or forwarding/multiring don't work?

bv12345
@wayport.net

bv12345

Anon

The city I live in is only about 1% of my electric companies customers, but I still appreciate it when they post on their website where there is an outage in my town.

They even once posted an outage when there a fire and service was knocked out to just my neighborhood alone.

Put on the website... 1% of our customers are being affected by an incoming call issue. That's not hard to do, and it is greatly appreciated by that small 1% that is affected by the outage.

PhonePower
Premium Member
join:2007-07-20
Winnetka, CA

PhonePower

Premium Member

Point well made
said by bv12345 :

The city I live in is only about 1% of my electric companies customers, but I still appreciate it when they post on their website where there is an outage in my town.

They even once posted an outage when there a fire and service was knocked out to just my neighborhood alone.

Put on the website... 1% of our customers are being affected by an incoming call issue. That's not hard to do, and it is greatly appreciated by that small 1% that is affected by the outage.


topgun
join:2011-01-31

topgun to Pinan

Member

to Pinan
said by Pinan:

Thank you PP.

So what would be the best way to cimcumvent an outage of this type if VM or forwarding/multiring don't work?

There is nothing to circumvent the CLEC was not sending the incoming calls to PhonePower. No different then having a water main break outside you house and asking you faucet manufacturer what can they do about it, NOTHING! When someone rings your phone it first hits a CLEC if their crap is broke nothing PP can do about it.

Pinan

join:2000-09-02
Murrieta, CA

Pinan

I didn't mean something that PP could do, I meant something that I could do.

Other ways to get my phone to ring should it happen again, which knowing voip, probably will. Redundancy ideas, etc.

Jeesh

PhonePower
Premium Member
join:2007-07-20
Winnetka, CA

3 edits

1 recommendation

PhonePower to Pinan

Premium Member

to Pinan
There is literally nothing in this situation. Inbound numbers can only be handled by a single LEC company and can not be multi-homed (meaning that only one company can handle your incoming number at any given time). I keep editing this to give you a complete picture.

You could give callers a backup number? Or if this is mission critical, maybe a move to POTS is warranted.

Maybe others have a creative solution, but at some level the number must work first...

topgun
join:2011-01-31

topgun

Member

Ditto, hence my water main example. Water has to enter your pad somewhere. If a pipe breaks and your water stops running are you going to call the utility company and say excuse me I'm running a business, you should have had some redundancy? They are going to say sorry pal take a number, lol. It would be nice if we had an endless supply of krypton, manpower, and money but this is the real world...

Pinan

join:2000-09-02
Murrieta, CA

Pinan to PhonePower

to PhonePower
Thanks PhonePower. An alternate number will be fine and not a problem. I'll work on it.

bv12345
@wayport.net

bv12345

Anon

Pinan... I was just thinking about this and something came to mind. With my previous VOIP provider, I had my regular number ported to them, which I have had for 35 years. Later I added a number, I think they called it a virtual number... but anyhow, it is where you have 2 phone numbers both on the same line with a distinctive ring.

Well, my previous provider never outright admitted this, but I found out through several good sources that they did not pay their bill with one of their CLECS, so I too had the same situation as you. I could make outgoing calls, but I could not receive calls. It was bad situation because my service was out for several days.

I come to find out that my other number, which I rarely used, just for faxes, rang and received a fax. It turned out that number was still working because it was a different CLEC.

What I am thinking here is this... maybe you could ask PP for a second number on a different CLEC. The downside is someone will have to call a different number if this type of situation occurs again. But the upside is that you will be able to receive calls. I would say the chances of 2 CLECS both going down at once is very high odds.

I do not think there is anything 100% fool proof. Even 911 has gone down and they have lots of backups in place.

topgun
join:2011-01-31

topgun to Pinan

Member

to Pinan
Alot of people suggest to separate VoIP compnies just like I have PP, SkypeOut, and Cell. You can get a cheap PAYG account from CallCentric or Voice Pulse.

Pinan

join:2000-09-02
Murrieta, CA

Pinan to bv12345

to bv12345
Thanks for the info bv12345. I'm looking into a second number now.

PhonePower
Premium Member
join:2007-07-20
Winnetka, CA

PhonePower to bv12345

Premium Member

to bv12345
We can certainly handle this for you.

I suggest IM'ing me directly and I'll handle it for you. Given that you've been very "nice" about I'll make sure you're well taken care of. Thanks

I will say that LEC outages a super duper low frequency events. But nothing in this world is 100%.
said by bv12345 :

Pinan... I was just thinking about this and something came to mind. With my previous VOIP provider, I had my regular number ported to them, which I have had for 35 years. Later I added a number, I think they called it a virtual number... but anyhow, it is where you have 2 phone numbers both on the same line with a distinctive ring.

Well, my previous provider never outright admitted this, but I found out through several good sources that they did not pay their bill with one of their CLECS, so I too had the same situation as you. I could make outgoing calls, but I could not receive calls. It was bad situation because my service was out for several days.

I come to find out that my other number, which I rarely used, just for faxes, rang and received a fax. It turned out that number was still working because it was a different CLEC.

What I am thinking here is this... maybe you could ask PP for a second number on a different CLEC. The downside is someone will have to call a different number if this type of situation occurs again. But the upside is that you will be able to receive calls. I would say the chances of 2 CLECS both going down at once is very high odds.

I do not think there is anything 100% fool proof. Even 911 has gone down and they have lots of backups in place.


topgun
join:2011-01-31

topgun

Member

Sure there is death and taxes Ye must be slippin PhonePower