Telstra outage blamed on hardware fault

Brian Corrigan

Engineers from Telstra and small internet service provider Dodo are investigating a minor equipment failure which left millions of customers without access to the internet.

Dodo managing director Larry Kestelman told The Australian Financial Review that the network outage started when one of its routers, a device that directs internet traffic, suffered a failure.

“It was rectified very quickly but it looks like some sort of configuration issue between ourselves and Telstra,” he said. “It was a very minor problem and should never have escalated like that. Something’s gone wrong somewhere.”

The network failure was still causing problems into the evening with Telstra spokeswoman Karina Keisler admitting at 6:20pm AEDT that some customers were still experiencing connection problems and slow speeds when trying to access the internet.

“This is due to the large increase of users and traffic on the internet at the moment following the national outage we experienced this afternoon,” she said. “We are working with the wholesale customer [Dodo] in relation to the outage to find out what occurred in our respective networks to prevent it happening again.”

“Telstra lost connectivity progressively to its international data network at around 1.40 this afternoon meaning customers could not access international websites from either their mobile or fixed services,” she said. “Customers who couldn’t access international sites were then overloading domestic sites causing major issues in accessing Australian sites as well.”

Ms Keisler said Telstra was also experiencing a high volume of calls to its customer service centres. She warned that customers accessing its online services might also be experiencing difficulties.

A senior telecommunications executive who asked not to be named said it was the worst internet outage he could remember in Australia.

Telstra’s network problems quickly became one of the top trending topics on Twitter with business and consumers using the microblogging service to spread the news.

After initially posting that it was investigating problems with its website’s performance, Westpac pointed the finger of blame at Telstra.

“There is a @Telstra issue affecting westpac.com.au & other sites. We’re looking into [sic] to ensure it’s resolved as soon as possible,” the bank’s staff tweeted.

“Challenging working for a web company when #Telstra is down. At least there is an excuse for a reduction in billable hours,” said Ben Scully.

“Darn you #Telstra our whole business goes down when you do!!!,” complained No Ink Marketing.

“Just went without Internet for over an hour! Worst & longest hour of my life!,” wrote Jarrod Gardiner.

“Oh Telstra killed the internet, I thought it was my phone and my computer being a***holes at the same time,” said Dan Baird.

“Hey #Telstra, have you tried turning it off an back on again?,” asked Mat Newman.

The Australian Financial Review