ving been in IT support roles for over 20 years now it never fails to amaze me how varied, and random my job can be!
A couple of weeks ago this came particularly into focus when i was faced with at least 2 broadband routers constantly rebooting themselves leaving clients and family members with very up and down broadband connections.
This comment piece i am writing is really one that tries to hammer home a few key points.
- Good IT Support is both incredibly valuable and absolutely necessary
- Keep your router software up to date!
- My job will never cease to be interesting and random – both at the same time!
Now..onto the issue itself.
Over the weekend a family member brought it to my attention that their broadband kept going up and down repeatedly. I paid them a visit and could see the behaviour but immediately put it down to a faulty router and put in an action to replace their router with a new one. It wasn’t until Monday morning when a client reported similar behaviour that it started to dawn on me that actually this is perhaps something a little more than a faulty router.
A bit of research on online forums and this confirmed to me that actually there was a common fault with Draytek routers that had shown itself over the weekend. Users across the world were faced with the same issues and helpfully many of them had put in temporary solutions to get their internet connections stable again.
It seemed that, and Draytek still haven’t formally confirmed this, that their routers had been subjected to hacking attempts by foreign actors which resulted in these hackers effectively being able to take control of elements of the router. This affected both routers that had the latest updates on them and those that didn’t. The fix was quite a simple one, simply turning off remote management and all VPN elements meant that the connections stabilised and then i was able to do any further updates on the router (if available).
It dawned on me after this issue, that we operate in such an inter-connected world and that quite frankly you have to be prepared for almost anything, whether thats within your control or not! Getting both family members and clients back working within 30-60 minutes is a salient reminder that having that person on the other end of the phone, as i mentioned at the top, is both recommended and essential!
If you are interested in taking out a great value IT Support contract please contact me at [email protected] or on 01473 345321 and I’d be happy to have a discussion about it.
