Northern Grid's new £8.3m BT network suffers major service disruption

07.09.2012
The Northern Grid for Learning, which recently awarded an to provide broadband services to schools and local authorities in the North East, has been experiencing major service issues over the past few days.

Poor experience of internet browsing in most schools on the network was first reported on Monday, September 3, just as children across the country return to school returned to school. Problems have persisted throughout the week, and the root cause has not yet been identified.

BT, which took over management of the network in July, has escalated the issue to Critical Priority Level 1, and has brought in an independent international expert team of network designers and engineers to go over every element of the core network, according to Northern Grid.

Throughout yesterday, the team validated and double checked the core network design to ensure that there were no conflicts or bottlenecks within the core network. The design and functionality of the core network was also thoroughly tested and approved.

BT has done over one million "pings" to all sites linked to the network. Parts of the network have been taken down, tested individually, re-connected and re-tested. All these tests were successful and no faults could be found within the core network.

"Despite these tests and intense scrutiny, we know that the experience of internet browsing for most schools has been poor, although a number of sites reported improvements from early afternoon," said Northern Grid in a issued last night.