It has been some weeks since DrukNet faced with some "unidentified problem" with Thimphu-Phuntsholing fibre optic cables. While it worked well some days ago, the same problem is being experienced again.

While the internet bandwidth or connectivity is erratic for inernational sites with those fibre optic cables being the main gateway to the international sites, clients cannot even open the local .bt sites very smoothly.

While I pinged the main website of DrukNet, I get unusual ping response time of around 2005ms. When the network connections are normal, the ping time response to local .bt sites used to be 2-digit mili-seconds. It usually takes less than 40ms to get response from any .bt sites hosted with the DrukNet.

I took some screenshots while pinging www.druknet.bt on December 19, 2011:

While the service is off and on most of the time, DrukNet hasn't given any notices on their official website. The affected clients might have only knew about the probable cause of the erratic network connection through some media.

I think it is important for any service providers like DrukNet to notify officially and keep their clients informed of any progress on any issues related to their services. When you do not give any announcement or explanation offcially, many feel that you are not paying any attention to the complaints. When you keep updating your progress on some issues, it shows that you are concerned service provider trying to provide best available services to your valuable clients.

There can be some dedicated place on www.druknet.bt as a maintenance window when there are some issues affecting any of the Bhutan Telecom's services. Through this window, officials can update their progress on their maintenance work on any specific issues.

I am not really sure whether having second fiber optic internet gateway opened via Gelephu will solve such erratic connections if it is some system-related problems within the DrukNet.