Three Network issues since the 1st December 2023

Anonymous · ‎12-09-2023

I have been using the 3internet APN for about 3 years now and never experienced problems with it. Historically, I would be assigned a public IP when I connect and would keep it until I reset my connection (reboot or power outage). That was up until about last Thursday when things started to not work (my VoIP phone, smart home, SSH connections to servers I admin). I went to complain about it on Friday (1st December) but everything was down and I couldn't even use my phone (on Smarty, which uses Three network). I spend most of Thursday on the phone to Santander trying to find out why I couldn't stay logged on to my account for long enough to do my basic banking and after their investigation they told me that my IP kept changing mid session. I have since found out that the public IP address assigned by Three keeps changing VERY rapidly like at least once a minute.

This was the logged changes yesterday while I wasted 4:30 hours on the phone to so called "Technical Support"

18:55 : 92.40.183.20
18:56 : 92.40.183.18
18:57 : 92.40.183.19
18:58 : 92.40.183.18
18:59 : 92.40.183.25

and again this morning while on to them AGAIN:

10:06 : 92.40.183.17
10:11 : 92.40.183.20
10:25 : 92.40.183.224
10:26 : 92.40.183.215
10:28 : 92.40.183.219
10:30 : 92.40.183.212
10:42 : 92.40.183.212
10:43 : 92.40.183.215
10:43 : 92.40.183.212
11:45 : 92.40.183.212
11:48 : 92.40.183.219
11:53 : 92.40.183.215
11:59 : 92.40.183.215
12:01 : 92.40.183.219

Note between 10:11 and 10:25 they did a "Network Refresh" or GPRS Reset when my modem was thrown off the network and I had to reboot the router. It basically bounces around a set number of IP's at random while the LTE session is connected.

Why has Three UK suddenly decided to do this? Surely this defeats the point of the 3internet APN as the almost constant IP changes will break connections? Having waited on hold and only help given is to switch it off and back on again, I've wasted 5 hours of my time trying to get Three to fix the issues. I have also been promised call backs which NEVER happen. Really at the end of my patiences with them now.

PeteG · ‎12-09-2023

Hey, Clivejo.

Welcome to the Three Community.

It's disappointing to see you're having so many issues because of this IP address shifting.

I don't have the information to hand at the moment to verify the details, but it doesn't look like the IP address range you've listed are the same as the ones we normally use/used for the 3internet APN. As far as I can remember, those ranges are what we use for the three.co.uk APN, and those were not public IP addresses.

Is it possible your APN settings have changed? Could you double check the APN settings to see if they are still set to the 3internet APN. If you're still having the issue afterwards, let me know. I'll be able to forward the info on to get it double checked for you.

Pete.

Anonymous · ‎12-09-2023

I haven't changed any settings on my side. Your "Technical Support" people had me change it to three.co.uk to test it and the same CGNAT that is happening on 3internet. I explained this all started after your national "outage" on the 1st December but your "experts" say it is normal behaviour of a dynamic public IP. An IP renewal every minute is NOT normal behaviour on ANY network!

Anonymous · ‎12-09-2023

Interesting, I just came home to find the router was disconnected from the LTE session like how it does when Technical Support do a Network Refresh/GPRS reset. I rebooted the router and have been assigned a 94.197.*.* address which appears to be a public routeable IP and more like the ones I used to get.

Did you do something PeteG ?

PeteG · ‎12-10-2023

I'm glad to hear it's working correctly now.

It wasn't me that did anything, but it could have been some other change going on in the background. The 94 range of IP address is correct for the 3internet APN and should be a longer term lease on the assigned address.

Since we don't know what fixed it, I'd recommend keeping an eye on it over the coming days or weeks just in case the issue returns.

Pete.

Anonymous · ‎12-10-2023

Are you at liberty to say what happened on the 1st December?

PeteG · ‎12-10-2023

I don't even know what happened on the 1st.

All I know is I was very, very, busy that day 🙂

Pete.

Anonymous · ‎12-10-2023

Well from what I observed, it seemed to be a routing or multiple routing issues on your cloud based core system. An upgrade/change to the configuration that went belly up! Data packets just kept getting lost in the "cloud"