We have been made aware of several important ISP work plans that may have an impact on network performance for all our titles and Websites. Our ISP has recognized a possible issue with their routers that run their backbone network lines, and are taking steps to fix the problem in an orderly and quick fashion to prevent a bad degradation in service or disconnection down the road.
Where we fit in this plan is any router that is updated must be taken down for 3 hours or so, which makes traffic reroute to other routers so the network traffic continues. When such rerouting is done it usually is accompanied by a change in traffic speed because of the longer route and possible capacity issues with the new route. Furthermore if that router is very close to our servers it is possible no route is available and we will be "blacked out" while the update is taking place.
Our ISP plans on doing these ISP maintenances through February. Many of you may have noticed a network drop late January, that was the symptom that started the ISP investigation and plan to fix it before it happens again. Below are the known ISP maintenances that have the best chance of directly affecting our service availability.
- February 9 : 2am - 5am Possible Black out, and/or suboptimal routing (Latency)
- February 21 : 2am - 5am Possible Black out, and/or suboptimal routing (Latency)
Please note that during February there is a strong likelihood of intermittent problems in the morning hours due to these updates taking place throughout our ISP network.