---
title: "What's the difference between an outage and planned maintenance?"
description: "Understanding the two types of events shown on network status pages."
url: "https://dev.www.lightningip.com.au/help/internet/outage-vs-planned-maintenance-nbn"
canonical: "https://dev.www.lightningip.com.au/help/internet/outage-vs-planned-maintenance-nbn"
updated: "2026-09-25"
---

# What's the difference between an outage and planned maintenance?

Understanding the two types of events shown on network status pages.

Both appear on our network status page, but they mean different things for what you can expect.

## Outages (incidents)

Unplanned faults - a damaged cable, a failed piece of equipment, a power issue at an exchange. These are unexpected and are fixed as quickly as possible once identified.

## Planned maintenance

Scheduled work to upgrade, repair or expand the network, carried out during low-usage windows wherever possible. These are announced in advance with an expected time and duration.

A brief drop during a planned maintenance window is expected and usually resolves itself once the work is finished.