We are increasing our capacity to BT by having new links installed.
This work actually started a few months ago, but the order process takes a long time! We are now at the stages of plugging in cables, configuring devices and then moving customers over.
This will be improving our capacity for our BT based ADSL, VDSL, G.FAST and FTTP circuits. TalkTalk connected circuits are unaffected (They are already using 10G links).
We will keep this status post updated with any work that may be customer affecting, we are also detailing the progress on this page: https://www.aa.net.uk/new-bt-hostlinks/
We are aware of some BT lines having some packetloss in the evenings - it's not all lines as it depends on how they are being routed.
A challenge we have is that we have multiple 1G links to BT at the moment, and traffic is not being balanced over them evenly which is resulting in some of these links sometimes getting full - and this causes the low levels of packetloss on some lines.
We have been planning upgrades and have had orders with BT for some months now. It's taking time but we're very nearly ready to use these new links to BT. We have details of the work taking place here: https://www.aa.net.uk/new-bt-hostlinks/
Unfortunately, the orders have taken longer than we expected and we're at a point where this has started to impact customers.
There is good news, we're hoping to be able to and some trial customers on the new BT links next week, and once we're happy we'll be moving every one over bit by bit over the course of a week or two.
We've always stated that our aim is not to be the bottle-neck, however for some customer in the evenings we are. We are working hard to resolve this though.
Further updates will be posted to these pages: https://www.aa.net.uk/new-bt-hostlinks/ and https://aastatus.net/32151
We are testing the new hostlinks on staff lines today.
We're ready for some customers to try our new BT hostlinks! This will involve A&A staff changing some setting and the customer changing the PPP login on their router.
For this trial, customers will need to have a single (non-bonded) BT line. Please email trial@aa.net.uk with your login and we'll make the changes and will get back to you.
We originally said we'd start moving customers on from Friday 18th October. This plan has changed slightly; We will start the process of moving customers over to the new hostlinks on the early hours of Monday morning (21st October). We will be moving customers on a per-LNS basis and moving one LNS each day. The move will involve forcing lines to reconnect, so customers will see a PPP drop overnight.
The move to the new hostlinks is still happening . We expect it to be completed early next week.
New hostlinks are now fully in service.