Emergency work could affect Blueyonder customers

**4me2** · 31st August 2003

Emergency upgrades to every router in the Telewest network could result in Blueyonder customers noticing short outages overnight from 1st September through the 11th, it was announced on Friday.

Greg Lam from the ISP's Service Department issued an announcement on Friday afternoon explaining:

"Telewest will be carrying out some emergency changes to our network over the next two weeks. The work is to further secure the network following a Cisco worldwide security alert that could affect all Cisco routers.

"The alert centred around a �denial of service� attack designed to damage routers that face publicly accessible networks such as the internet. The �denial of service� attack would allow unsolicited traffic to flood the router preventing genuine traffic from being sent or received, making normal business operation impossible.

"At the time the alert was issued Telewest instigated a temporary fix to
safeguard the network and all affected services from the majority of
possible attacks. However Cisco's advice was to effect a permanent
change to the router software. The Cisco recommended software has now
been rigorously tested and is ready for deployment onto the live
network. The software will be installed gradually so that outage time is
kept to a minimum."

All work will be carried out between 01:00 and 06:00 BST between the dates mentioned above. Blueyonder anticipates that outages should only last around ten minutes "in the majority of cases." It was noted, however, that as "every router in the Telewest network will need to be upgraded, you may experience several brief outages during this period."

Currently, the work schedule looks like this:

Sep 1: Croydon, Preston regions
Sep 2: Hayes region
Sep 3: Barnsley region
Sep 4: Knowsley region
Sep 5: Basildon region
Sep 6: Edinburgh region
Sep 7: Haringey region
Sep 8: Gateshead, Uddingston regions
Sep 9: Perry Bar region
Sep 10: Wolverhampton region
Sep 11: Aztec region

More specific details can be found on Blueyonder's upcoming outages page.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds11631.html

**4me2** · 31st August 2003

Blueyonder announces V.92 support

Blueyonder now officially supports the V.92 dial-up modem specification, bringing new features such as Modem-on-Hold, which works with Call Waiting service to enable calls to be received without cutting off the Internet connection entirely.

The code upgrades to Blueyonder's modem racks were completed at the end of July, although it is only now that the ISP has confirmed support.

Another feature of the V.92 specification that is now supported is Quick Connect, which cuts the modem handshake time in approximately half - those interested in such matters can even listen to a standard V.90 handshake along with a new V.92 type on the V.92 site for comparison purposes.

Blueyonder say they won't be supporting the V.44 compression protocol at this time, but may consider adding it with a future stable code release from their modem rack vendor.

A new Instant Support Tool for dialup is also being launched, along with the national rollout of a single Blueyonder dial-up phone number.

Chad Raube, Director of Internet Services at Telewest, said:

"Whilst broadband remains at the heart of our business, our competitors continue to focus on high-speed services at the expense of their dial-up customers. Telewest Broadband is committed to delivering an unparalleled customer experience whichever service you choose."

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds11630.html