The issues appear to have been resolved by mid-night last night.  According to a BigPond spokesperson, the problem was due to a faulty server at Telstra Internet Direct, and based on reports from affected ISPs it involved BGP (the core Internet routing protocol). (source: Whirlpool)

Customers from numerous Australian ISPs are reporting network outages across the country.

BigPond customers reported no international connectivity just before 9PM, while Optus users reported outages and slowness at the same time. BigPond’s support lines are overloaded, and a message says that calls “could not be completed at this time”.

Westnet said it had lost ADSL2+ backhaul to “WA, SA and QLD”, Internode lost its Tasmanian POP and Exetel customers are complaining about severe slowdowns.

It is likely that Telstra has had a major network failure, which has impacted ISPs across the country.

More information will be posted when available.