8x8 says the failure of its VoIP system Packet8 yesterday was caused, according to the company, by "an Internet element beyond our control." The service returned by 4:30 PM pacific time and the company is still looking into the causes of the disruption.
A major issue during the disruption was 8x8's own internal systems (including their website) went down with the VoIP service. Their own 8x8 Virtual Office is used internally, and when the system went offline, 8x8 employees used their own cell phones to communicate with frustrated clients.
TMCnet points out that the outage has a occurred almost a year after Packet8 experienced an outage due to a DNS issue. Back then a domain name service registry problem with www.packet8.net [1] resulted in customers not being able to reach the packet8.net website and having failures in phone service. Registry.com was apparently at fault. Packet8 had a number of fail-over processes, but DNS issues prevented the mechanisms from working as anticipated. The 2009 outage bares a striking resemblance to this new outage with phones going down as well as the website. Could the same problem strike again?
For more:
- read this article [2]
Related articles
DNS hiccups at Packet8 [3]
8x8 launches HD voice for its Virtual Office product [4]
8x8 seeing more gov biz, larger customer [5]
8x8 sees Q2 profits increase with new customers and sales team [6]
Links:
[1] http://www.packet8.net/
[2] http://small-business-voip.tmcnet.com/topics/smb-voip/articles/72598-voip-provider-8x8-back-normal-after-service-outage.htm
[3] http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/hiccups-packet-8-due-dns-problems/2009-01-25
[4] http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/8x8-launches-hd-voice-virtual-office/2010-01-06
[5] http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/it-expo-west-8x8-seeing-more-gov-biz-larger-customer-deployments/2009-09-03
[6] http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/8x8-sees-q2-profits-increase-new-customers-and-sales-team/2009-11-02