Sky Broadband DOWN again: Huge outage leaves thousands offline for second time in 24 hours

NOW RESOLVED: Sky has confirmed that its broadband issues have been resolved, with customers able to get back online without disruption. Those who didn’t lose their internet connection completely, but found the performance was sluggish or patchy. Customer service representatives for Sky confirmed the news on Twitter.

The original story, published while thousands were still complaining about broadband issues, follows below…

Update: Sky has confirmed that customers are experiencing issues with their broadband. While not everyone will be left offline, a number of customers could still see “degraded broadband performance”, Sky has warned. Of course, reports on social media suggest that a number of people are left without a broadband connection due to the issues. Confirming the problems, Sky has tweeted: “NEW: Degraded Broadband performance. Some customers may not be able to get online. We are currently working to resolve this. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused.”

Original story follows below…

It’s been a rough 24-hour period for Sky Broadband customers. After a fault left thousands of people offline in the middle of the night, another fault has cropped up in the last few minutes. The issue, which is currently unexplained, has left more than two thousand Sky Broadband customers scrambling without an active internet connection. With millions still working and studying from home, an internet outage can be devastating

Sky customer service representatives, who operate the @SkyHelpTeam account on Twitter, have been replying to frustrated customers who find themselves offline. Dozens of Sky Broadband customers have flooded the social media account to complain about problems with their home broadband connection.

Sky has yet to reveal the cause of the latest broadband issue.

However, some customers have suggested the problem could be related to the DNS. For those who don’t know, a DNS is essentially a phonebook for your gadget. The first thing that happens when you type a URL into your browsers’ address bar – like express.co.uk, for example – is your device translates that text into an IP address that it understands – something like 192.168.1.1. To translate the human-friendly web address into the computer-literate IP address, your machine uses a DNS. This acts like an enormous phonebook that tells your browser what IP address it needs to load to take you to the website you’re looking for.

It’s worth noting that Sky has not confirmed or denied whether its DNS is to blame for the ongoing outage, which impacts people across the UK.

Independent website DownDetector, which monitors social media to track whether web services and online apps are working correctly, has recorded a huge spike in reports from disgruntled customers. More than a thousand people have complained about their internet connection going offline. 

The latest surge in reports, which started around 2.39pm this afternoon (Wednesday August 4, 2021), is now bigger than the spike that took place last night, running from around 1.39am to 3.09am that peaked with 3,649 reports every few minutes. Sky had previously confirmed that it had identified the cause of the issue that wiped out thousands of users’ connections last night. It tweeted: “Customers will now be able to get online and make/receive calls. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused.”

source: express.co.uk