19th December 2001 2.30pm to 3.30pm

A failure in a core switch again brought down the BGfL core network.  This is the switch that had last week been diagnosed as having a faulty component which was replaced.  Our suppliers have been asked to replace the whole switch.  Traffic has now been rerouted through an alternative switch.

14th December 2001 5pm approx to 17th December 2001 12 noon approx

A failure of a processor cooling fan in our main e-mail server brought the whole BGfL e-mail service down.  The fan has been replaced and service has been restored.

13th December 2001 4pm to 5.15pm

A failure on a Telewest circuit outside our ISP's local network meant a loss of Internet access.  Internet traffic was diverted to an alternative route while the fault was investigated further.

11th to 12th December 2001

Slow access from late Tuesday afternoon to approximately 9.30am on Wednesday morning followed by intermittent loss of service during the afternoon were caused by a hardware fault on a switch in the BGfL core network which has now had a faulty component replaced.

9th December 2001

A "planned outage" which we had not been informed about on our ISP's network resulted in a loss of service from 9.30am to 12.50pm.

6th December 2001

An intermittent problem with the Web mail service and video streaming facilities was traced to a faulty switch in the core of the BGfL network which has now been restarted after our maintenance company diagnosed a software fault.

5th December 2001

Slow Internet access during the day was caused by a firewall outside our control restricting the amount of Internet bandwidth available. This was resolved at 5pm.

4th December 2001 09:10

A further recurrence of yesterday's problem again meant a loss of Internet access, caused by our ISP's supplier at their connection to the main Internet backbone in Telehouse.  Access was restored at 09:49.

3rd December 2001 18:45

A recurrence of the earlier problem meant that again there was a loss of Internet connectivity for 20 minutes.

3rd December 2001 12:55

The failure of a router in Telehouse in London meant that we lost our Internet connection for approximately 20 minutes from 12:55.

30th November 2001

Service was restored at 10am and full Internet services are once more available on BGfL.

27th November 2001

Another failure on our ISP's network means that no Internet access is now possible.  Our ISP are working to restore the limited connectivity that we have had for the last week or so.

26th November 2001

The slow Internet access caused by our Internet Service Provider's network continues.  We have requested a date by which a new circuit will be provided with sufficient Internet bandwidth and are awaiting a formal response.  Updates will be posted here and on the BGfL home page as they become available.  We are also investigating other short term solutions which may help.  Please note that access to the BGfL website is unaffected.

16th November 2001

A failure on our ISP's main Birmingham to London circuit reduced the capacity of our Internet connection by over 80%.  Internet access is now very slow.  We are pressing our ISP for a resolution to this problem as a top priority and apologise for the inconvenience that we know this is causing.

11th May 2001

A sudden and unexpected rise in the number of computers simultaneously accessing the Internet (over 3,000) exceeded the capacity of our filtering proxy servers.  A server was redeployed to cover this increase and normal service was resumed.

6th March 2001
A system crash on our mail server caused a complete failure of our e-mail service.  Although full backups are taken of the mail server on a regular basis, unfortunately we were unable to restore the service for 3 days and the restored version did not include all files that had been lost.  We apologise for this as we appreciate the inconvenience that this has caused but we had taken what we believed was the necessary action to restore the service in the event of such a failure and when the backup was needed it proved to be inadequate.  A full review of this will be undertaken to ensure that we are not in a similar position in future.  An upgrade to the e-mail server had already been planned for later this month, but unfortunately the new software (which we believe would not have crashed) had not been delivered.  The e-mail service was restarted on March 9th.

If you have any problems with e-mail addresses or passwords as a result of this crash please notify the This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it on 0121 303 5100 or if you have access to e-mail you can e-mail This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it '; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text93405 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //-->\n This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it with details of the problem.

Monday 12th February 2001
A power failure in our main computer room took down our main servers at around 2am. Most services were restored automatically but a fuse had "tripped" causing the main servers to remain down.  Service was restored shortly after 9am.