Why we have internet outages

Some people question why they seem to have more internet outages on Camposol than they are used to in other places they have lived or worked regardless of wether they are on a fibre, ADSL or a wireless provider. I am going to try to explain as simply as possible why this is.

Data networks are always going down everywhere on the planet, There are many reasons for this from hardware failures, cable faults and software issues to maintenance, damage, cable thieves and weather, the possible causes of a network failure are too many to list here. Most end users are unaware of the outages because of routing protocols that automatically reroute traffic to avoid any issues when they occur.

As far as Camposol is concerned, in network terms, it is a remote rural location, all of the fixed line internet providers on Camposol, including the mighty Telefonica, be them wireless, fibre or copper based, have one big vulnerability, they have one single route in. This one route covers many kilometres to the nearest point where there is access to the internet backbone and has all the potential problems as mentioned earlier, having only one route means that the automatic re routing protocols used in more accessible areas with multiple gateways to the internet backbone are useless so the end user is affected each time there is a network fault on this route.

In actual fact the number of outages occurring on these routes is surprisingly few all things considered, its human nature to only remember the days with outages, especially if there is more than one in a short period of time, and now you know why it happens I am sure you will agree, we all do a pretty good job keeping things going with the odds stacked against us as they are.

We at Compusurf, like all the other providers on Camposol, are well aware of this problem ,unfortunately there is nothing practical that is not cost prohibitive that can be done, its a fact of life when living in a remote rural network location. At this time the best we can do is to litigate the effects by having a support team on call 24 / 7 ready to act if the problem is within our own infrastructure responsibility or keep customers informed when the problem is outside our infrastructure responsibility.

We have had customers leave us to go to other providers for the purpose of less outages only to find nothing has changed, I even see people asking on social media for the most reliable service as they run an internet critical business and can not afford any outages. If you really cannot afford any outages, no matter how short, you either need to move the operation to a more urban area or consider a back up service from another fixed provider or the mobile network, the mobile network tends to see less outages because it does have more than one route into Camposol.

As time goes on more critical network infrastructure may reach Camposol but this is determined by market forces and costs enormous amounts of money so don’t expect it too soon. In the meantime, relax and enjoy life in this glorious part of Spain.


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