Optus users shut out of Chinese websites

Optus users have been unable access a number of Chinese websites over the past week due to a fault in the network of an upstream provider.

Since last Friday Optus customers have been complaining that Chinese websites accessed via HTTPS have been inaccessible. 

Optus appeared to re-route the traffic to a “US international link” — understood to be owned by US-based internet service provider Global Technology & Technology — as an interim solution on Monday, but users began reporting issues again on Tuesday.

The telco confirmed it had identified a fault with its regular third-party “Australia-Hong Kong internet link”, operated by telco service provider Pacnet.

"Collaborating with multiple international telecommunication partners along the path, across what is in a fact 'network of networks', can take time, but our teams have been working together to identify and isolate the issue since we became aware of the problem," a spokesperson said.

According to the telco’s service support status page, the issue affected all users across the country with fixed broadband and cable attempting to access internationally hosted Chinese websites.

“Optus advises customers … that they may experience a degraded level of service accessing internationally hosted Chinese websites/services for the duration of the outage,” it told customers in an advisory.

“We have temporarily rerouted the affected traffic via the US International Link while we investigate the root cause of the issue.

"This may cause response times to & from Asia to increase but will restore access to the websites.

"We are actively investigating the issue and are working together with our upstream provider in that region to fix the routing issue.”

Update 10:30pm: Optus advised it believed the issue has been resolved. It said it will continue to monitor the fix closely.