Service Status

All systems are operating normally.

Previous Faults

09-03-2023 12:30 There was a problem affecting some websites hosted with Paston for the last 12 hours, this has been resolved following the addition of further disk space and a reboot.

14-12-22 09:30 There is a problem affecting Paston email addresses.  The server is being looked at now by the system admin staff. Resolved 10:30

28-09-2022 09:30 A number of broadband customers have reported authentication problems. We are told that the network team are currently working to bring the impacted users back online. Resolved 11:00

28-6-22 10:15 Server back to normal.

28-6-22 09:15 The email server has been rebooted and emails are starting to flow to accounts again.

28-6-22 08:15 There is a problem affecting Paston email addresses.  The server is being looked at now and may require a reboot to clear the problem.

20/5/22 16:30  Further to our previous communications, we have been monitoring the network and are pleased to confirm that services are remaining stable.
We are aware that there are still a small number of customers experiencing issues with some services which we are working hard to rectify.
However, after further investigation today following last night’s emergency work, we have established the need to conduct further work within the Storage Area Network at Global Switch.
This essential work will take place this evening (Friday) between 8.30 pm and 12.30 am.

19/5/22 08:20 Internet connections. Some of our broadband customers have no connection and the network data centre is attempting to get them restored.
19/5/22 10:00 There is a fault at a Data Centre in London and engineers are working to resolve the fault as soon as possible. Many apologies for the inconvenience.
19/5/22 10:38  "Service partner planned works have ran further than expected causing large outages across the country. We're currently investigating to get these connections back online" (from our service provider)
19/5/22 12:32 Customer Announcement from our service provider:
We are currently experiencing a major network incident impacting our Global Switch location.
This is having an impact on all National Broadband services, Workplaces UC services, and Hosting services.
We have engineers on-site currently investigating this issue and will update you as soon as possible.
We apologise for the disruption this is having on your services.
Please be assured that we are doing absolutely everything to restore services as soon as we can.
19/5/22 16:30 Work continues on re-building the faulty system and switches with services now being  re-started . No exact completion time has been given, but it is estimated to take another 4 hours.
19/5/22 20:10 The emergency work continues between 8pm and 2am that is hoped to re-establish resilience in the network and restore services for all customers.
20/5/22 08:02 Our engineering team worked throughout the night to resolve the issues we experienced with our network node at Global Switch yesterday. The work completed earlier this morning and services have returned to normal.

20/5/22 10:32 Out going SMTP mail server smtp.eclipse.co.uk has been decommissioned, please contact Paston support for details of an alternative server.

 

31/01/2022 Notification of server downtime. In order to ensure the stability of our hosting, we need to periodically carry out infrastructure upgrades.
There will be a brief downtime as the server will be halted for the duration of the migration. The duration depends on the size of the server which is being moved and converted. In the case of your VPS the downtime is likely to be in the region of 3 hours.
In order to minimise disruption we intend to carry out this migration during the evening. We will be migrating your VPS on the evening of Mon 31st Jan.

01/10/2021 08:00 A web server has gone offline which is effecting a number of websites (including www.paston.co.uk). The web hosting provider are investigating. Resolved 15:00

Important announcement for all customers using smtp.webfaction.com as their outgoing email server (host).

One of our suppliers, Webfaction, has been taken over by GoDaddy, and will be decommissioning their servers on 14th/15th September.

The extremely short notice is because GoDaddy have decided at the last moment not to take over Webfaction customers.

For our customers it means that if you are currently using smtp.webfaction.com in your email client program (eg Outlook, Thunderbird etc.) it will be necessary to make changes.

Incoming email services and webmail are not effected.

Some of the information you will require is personal to you - but will include:

Host Name (same for all customers): - smtp.de.opalstack.com
Username: (personal to you)
Password : (personal to you)
Secure Port Number for SSL (same for all customers): 465
Secure Port Number for TLS: (same for all customers): 587
Authentication Type (same for all customers): Password
Use TLS/SSL: (same for all customers); tick or (Auto)

For the personal information you will need to contact the office (ideally by email to support@paston.co.uk) or call 01603 340010 before the 14th/15th September.

We have recorded a short video which is available at the following link which we hope will guide you through the set-up.

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/592064101

The simple password required is LetMeIn

As we're sure you appreciate this is an extremely busy time and we are experiencing a high volume of inquiries, and we will contact you as soon as possible.

31/08/2021 08:00 - Customers with email addresses NOT ending @paston.co.uk are experiencing problems downloading emails to their devices. The email hosting provider are investigating.

23/09/2020 14:38 - Latest update from our providers:
The new DNS server built off-network wasn't serving requests fast enough and this was leading to fatal timeouts, despite the hardware being over-specified (on paper). We built another server in a different location over the last two hours, and changed the DNS glue records to this new server and are waiting propagation to the wider Internet. We continue to monitor. Please email support@paston.co.uk if your website is unavailable.

23/09/2020 12:45 - Latest update from our providers:
It looks like the DDOS attack has started again unfortunately,

We are sorry for the inconvenience, this is something we somewhat expected and are going to be looking at more serious mitigations over the next few hours.

This was due to a very large, and prolonged attack on our client DNS servers. Whilst they were operating there was so much traffic being thrown at them that they were unable to serve legitimate client requests.

We have implemented a number of mitigations overnight including creating an off-network DNS servers. We obviously cannot rule out additional events today.

23/09/2020 01:22 - Latest update from our providers:
Update: We are still working to mitigate this issue and roll out robust preventative measures, normal service will resume as soon as possible and we thank you for your patience.

Update @ 01:00: The attack has ceased and we've taken some steps to better protect some infrastructure. We will review the situation over the coming hours and make a report in due course. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience.

22/09/2020 19:00 - Latest update from our providers:
"We are aware that many of our services are showing as down or offline, including web servers, emails, DNS engine and our main website

We have identified this as DDoS Attack on our DNS services.

Our server engineers are currently working on redirecting this attacks and reviewing options to prevent this happening again in the future"

22/09/2020 16:30 - We are currently battling against a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack to our services.
We are trying to get things back online ASAP. Please be patient with us

01/09/2019 09:00 - There was an issue with the kernel memory resource being exhausted which has now been increased and the server rebooted. Email services are now working normally.

31/08/2019 18:00 - Customers with email addresses ending @paston.co.uk experiencing problems using webmail and downloading emails to their devices. The email hosting provider are investigating.