Broadband ISP Virgin Media (O2) should now be coming back online after some of the provider’s customers suffered a partial outage of their internet connectivity this morning. This appears as if it could have stemmed from a peering/routing issue with some of their network partners (this may have also impacted other online services / providers).
According to Down Detector, the outage itself started at around 10am and only began to improve just before midday. A spokesperson for Virgin Media said: “We’re aware that some customers are experiencing intermittent issues with their services. We apologise for any inconvenience and are working to fix this as a priority.”
Feedback from customers indicates that some were able to get around the problem by switching to a third-party Domain Name System (DNS) provider, while others found that using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) was able to avoid the issue. In other words, the problem wasn’t so much with the physically broadband connection, but rather with how Virgin Media or their network / peering partners were routing the traffic.
At this stage it’s not clear precisely what caused the issue, although the majority of Virgin Media’s broadband customers don’t appear to have been affected and most should now be back online. But we are still seeing reports from customers who cannot access remote office VPN systems or other services, such as Microsoft 365. Anything Azure-hosted seems to be problematic.