15022 Lee Highway, Bristol, VA  24201

276-669-4112              

For Immediate Release:

BVU OptiNet Internet service interruption

Over 3,000 BVU OptiNet residential and commercial customers have been without Internet service this afternoon in Bristol, VA.  OptiNet network engineers now believe the problems were caused by a denial of service attack from the Internet.  Mark Lane, BVU OptiNet Network Engineer explains, “We began seeing evidence of this last week, but at that time it appeared to be virus related.”  On Monday, OptiNet Internet service was knocked out and engineers worked throughout the day and into the night to isolate problems on the residential network.  That network was shut down, changes made and then brought back up on Tuesday.  This seemed to clear up the problems.

Today, at approximately 11:20 a.m., the OptiNet network switches became overwhelmed with traffic.  Engineers made a decision at noon to shut down residential and business Internet so that non-Internet services would not be impacted.  Tests have now determined that the traffic that bombarded the system was from outside the OptiNet network.  Mark Lane states, “We don’t know if this is malicious or if it’s being caused by a Trojan program.  As of 4:15 pm today, we are now bringing customers back up on a controlled basis.  Our number one goal is to bring customers back on-line.”

Businesses will be brought back online first due to the obvious economic impact.  BVU requests that customers remain patient throughout the evening and know that all network engineers are working to resolve this problem.