Another broadband outage strikes Comcast

Comcast's high-speed Internet service on Tuesday suffered nationwide outages for the second time in six days, which the cable giant blamed on issues related to its domain name servers.

The three-hour outage came after a similar issue hit Comcast on Thursday for six hours. Both involved issues with the cable giant's domain name servers, which translate and route Web page requests from users. Although Internet applications such as instant messaging could continue to operate, Web site requests either did not respond or were sluggish.

A Comcast spokeswoman said Tuesday night's outage was first noticed about 6:30 p.m. PT and service was restored about three hours later.

"We were able to identify the situation right away," Comcast spokeswoman Jeanne Russo said. "We are working with the (hardware) vendor to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Russo declined to identify Comcast's hardware vendor.

Throughout online message boards, including Comcast's own forum, subscribers fumed at the company's second outage in four days. Michael Spoonauer, a software engineer and Comcast customer from Quincy, Mass., noticed the issue Tuesday evening when Web site requests continued to time out. Spoonauer said Comcast's support representative told him that that the network was experiencing an unscheduled outage due to server maintenance.

Spoonauer bristled at Comcast for not informing its users about the outage, and added that the company's Web site offered little information about why the service was down again.

"I would consider it to be corporately responsible to send a message to customers saying what happened, why it happened and what they're going to be doing to prevent it," Spoonauer said. "It's not too much to ask from a company."

Comcast's Russo said the company communicates issues through areas on its Web site and sometimes through recorded messages that greet callers.

Comcast is the nation's largest broadband Internet access provider. It reported 7 million subscribers at the end of 2004.

[clpdan]

Guess what? They are down AGAIN on Wednesday night 4/13/2005

I am accessing this using my Earthlink dial up account that I had
to purchase LAST NIGHT because comcast was down - also DNS
related. Guess what? They are down again tonight, 4/13 and it
is DNS related AGAIN!! I was able to get to my work server via ip
address, but name resolution is not working. Thus, I had to
dialup (phone and modem . . . how quaint). Thanks comcast.

[clpdan]

Comcast down again on 4/13 - This was posted as of 7:14 PM MDT

General Outage

(Connection to the Internet is currently unavailable. Our
technicians are aware of the situation and are working to resolve
the issue. This outage was logged at : 4/13/2005 6:47:00 PM
EDT.)

[Ron Bischof]

Add DNS Servers

I'm a Comcast subscriber. Solve your dependence on a single
ISP's DNS by adding addition servers. Here's a list of what I use:

4.2.2.1
4.2.2.2
4.2.2.3
4.2.2.4
4.2.2.5
4.2.2.6
204.127.198.19
63.240.76.19
64.34.66.10
64.34.66.11

[ManInBlack]

Gone again, skip to my Lou...gone again, skip to my Lou

Don't forget to contact Comcast Customer Support and request to be credited for the outage.

Running outage count:
4/9
4/12
4/13

BTW: Adding public DNS servers (make sure they can be trusted) to your configuration will alleviate any browsing problems. Look for a list in a another post in this TalkBack

[Jonathan]

Thanks to the person who posted those DNS Servers

Shout out to the person on the last thread who posted those DNS servers. I was down for all of 5 minutes yesterday while I updated my router settings.
Comcast will be hearing from me tomorrow. I want a freaking refund for part of this month. This is just asinine. Have these ***holes ever heard of redundancy? They rape customers with insane rates and dont have the infrastructure to back up such rates. Seriously this is complete BS. For those who want the numbers again:

DNS Servers:
205.166.226.38
69.67.108.10
68.46.140.152
207.218.192.38
207.218.192.39
204.127.202.4

[namratsxx01]

Window Updates,Computer Down,No ! Copmcast Servers Down

Thanks for the info on the servers down. I thought I had problems with window updates.Been running Norton scans,restarting computers and all comes down to Comcast not letting cust. no the deal! and Thanks c/net

[scampcat]

Comcast gets worse

Comcast customer service won't accept calls today regarding the continual outage. Calling multiple times during the evening, each time they refuse to answer. It goes into a recording loop supposedly trying to connect and then disconnects...every single time. Dirty trick. They won't even face their customers now. And they refuse to give refunds like last night. Evidently if all of their national customers are not getting service, they won't refund anything to anyone. We all just have to suffer. Last night on the phone with them, the person said "May I have your account number please? Oh wait, just give me your name." So obviously they don't want to get into account details to provide any refunds for failure of service. How impersonal. And the supposed 3 hours outage? Try again. Over six hours, then the next morning, then that night, then the next day, and the next... These claims of 3 hours? Business lies to try and make them look benevolent and responsive. Try asking the actual users how long it was out instead of the deceitful business face. I'm utterly disgusted.

[Stating]

Comcast Moved To National DNS Servers

Some discussion at length on DSLreports.com about Comcast and DNS. They apparently stopped using local DNS servers and moved to national, thereby creating a single point of failure. Comcast customer routers point to:
68.87.66.196
68.87.64.196

[persiaa66]

Why the switch?

Thanks for the information. I suppose they switched to "save money" or "be more efficient". I hope they go back to the prior reliability or I'm switching to dsl.

A familiar tune

Back when Comcast decided to let its ISP vendor @Home slide into banruptcy and teach itself how to be an ISP, I had no service or service at worse-than-dialup speed for about a month. I could never get Comcast customer service to admit the problem, much less to apologize or provide a refund. If I get the same runaround on a refund for these outages, I will complain to the Florida Attorney General, who along with the AGs in 46 other other states recently took on Blockbuster over its just-kidding-in-many-markets no-late-fee ad campaign. I suggest others who suffered these Comcast outages and fail to get refunds complain to the appropriate officials their states.

During tax time, too!

The timing couldn't have been worse, either. A lot of folks were doing their taxes this week (no comments about procrastination, please) online for the first time. Having your ISP go down two days in a row is ridiculous in the extreme.

[ZP]

WOW

Wow people. Do you all rely on the internet that much where you are all ready to throw Comcast to the wolves because of a few outages. Does anyone ever think that even the biggest companies have problems too. I do not agree with them not informing their customers but really people as one poster said he had to setup an Earthlink account for that night just to get on the internet. That seems like overkill. People should get off their butts and enjoy life instead of sitting in front of their keyboard. I am a Comcast customer and I found it to be a godsend. A moment of peace for the crazy world of the internet.

Re: WOW

Yes some of us do rely on the internet that much. It may just be a pr0n downloading tool for some, but for others like me it is a business tool as well as an educational tool (online classes). When my internet connection is down, I lose money. No one can access my website therefore no one can purchase my products and click on my revenue generating advertisements. Also, to attend class I must have a healthy internet connection. If not, i lose money in the form of class time, and trust me they are expensive enough to be POed. I pay way more than the typical $50 a month for my connection to accomodate all the traffic. If comcast doesn't want to compensate me, then i say hell yeah throw em to the wolves. If there were any competition in the area, I'd be on it in a heartbeat. Oh well, I guess I'll continue to be monopolized by Comcast.

Actually,

Yes, we are ready to throw them to the wolves. because since their first outage, Xbox Live returns a DNS error every single time, so I can't connect. SO, when I go through and make sure everything is set up right, spend 4 hours total with Xbox Live Techs on Teirs 1 & 2, and no one at comcast can give me a simple answer to get it working, yes, we are ready to throw them to the wolves.

Just keep your mouth shut and realize that some of us have certain things we need or want to do and they cannot be done, when we're already paying high prices to begin with.

[Christopher Hall]

This isn't the second time

I've had service cutouts no less than ten times in the past seven days. I've had to redirect my proxy to go through my old university's servers (thank God they haven't shut out my LDAP!) just to get online.

This is inexcusable. I wonder if we'll be compensated for our troubles...?

[rockerrb]

Another Outage W 4/13/05

Same problem. Why is it that a mulibillion dollar corporation can't set up their servers with fault tolerant rollover capability? The technology is there to do so. This is a serious and severe problem that needs to be fixed immediatly. My guess is that there will be more outages. This is the 3rd one in less than a month and half. They are going to lose business en mass if they don't get the issue fixed pronto.

Ryan
Littleton, CO

[Snowdog63]

DB was right

You people need to cut the frigging umbilical cord and get back to the way things used to be done.

It is YOUR fault that YOU have become so dependant on the Internet.

Just remember, less than 5 years ago this world was moving along JUST FINE without broad band in every home. Now, you people act like it is a God given RIGHT to have broadband, and if it goes down for a few hours than your life comes to a screeching halt. You people are seriously pathetic.

BTW - I am a Comcast subscriber, and in the 2 years that I have had broadband at home ( approx 122,640 hours) I have been down for about a total of 25 hours - that is about .02% of my total time!!!!! I will take those types of coverage ANY time!! And at the same time, Comcast has jumped me from less than 80k DL speed to about (on average) 650k - at NO additional cost to me!!!!

The only people that need to "shut their mouths" are you losers that are complaining.

[shoffmueller]

What a moron

I guess the whole home-office thing is over your head.

[shoffmueller]

What a moron

I guess the whole home-office thing is over your head.

[shoffmueller]

What a moron

I guess the whole home-office thing is over your head.

[gravitywellv40]

laugh out loud thank you another one who understand why do things on the net go out n live not isolate yourself

[namratsxx01]

Comcast outage Independence,Mo. 1900C

Its down Its up 3 days in a row !! I'll never get my paper work Done ! !

Comcast Affects other Networks

Comcast briefy owned then spun off Bresnan Communications.
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.bresnan.net" target="_newWindow">http://www.bresnan.net</a>

DNS problems with Bresnan have amounted to extreme hair
pulling and teeth grinding as Bresnan denies DNS exploits and
insists its the customer's computer. Clearly, Comcast remains
part of the internal structure of Bresnan's network, and Comcast
problems cascade downhill to other networks reliant on
Comcast.

Bill Bresnan claims an open door policy for his customers, but
polite, respectful letters asking what's up with the DNS problem
have gone unanswered over a 60 day period. Customer Service
phone bank personnel clearly stall and weasel the question, so
the value of $60 a month for high speed internet accesss is only
half delivered because of the persistent time outs and DNS
failures.

[bigmike44]

Comcast isssue Bad/Terrible Tech suport

We just had a major windstorm here in Washington State (Seattle)we had no power for 2-3 day and when power was restored, we got our cable connection. Well I called them about the internet connection, and the tech on the other end said there were no signs of reported outages.(On Sunday we still have approx 300,000 people without power but Comcast say not reported problems only in New Jersey and PA.) The tech told that I was being switched from this Adelphia network which I had never been a part of since I new customer only 5 months. She wanted me to turn off my router and my modem. I told her that I did not have my router even connected and that it had nothing to do with the connection. She then wanted me to bounce the router and I kept telling her there were no internet activity lights. Then she said to turn off my computer, I told her the computer has nothing to do with the cable modem not getting any activity lights. Finally I told her never mind, I will call back later and speak with someone who had more experience and can tell me what is going on with the internet outage. Obviously it was something on their end, but the tech was so incompetent it was just ridiculous, that she would even be trying to troubleshoot with someone over the phone. And to top if all off she wanted to schedule a tech to come out and try to fix the issue when all I wanted was for someone to give me an answer on what was the issue with the Comcast network and why my a few neighbors internet connection was not functioning. Comcast support it really bad, they read from text books and don?t know a thing about the product or their network.

Support Sucks just awful..

[sxwhite]

Comcast is a LIE!!!

Hi,
I am a Comcast subscriber, and I can honestly tell you this outage started 9am on Tuesday, and did not get resolved until 8am Wednesday. I called there Customer Service a dozen times all throughout the day and night. The absolute last time I called was 4:30am Wednesday morning and the outage still occured.

I think Comcast was very irresponsible for not informing subscribers. Also you would think a large ISP like them would have failover, backup, reduency, etc.

If they are going to make changes to DNS, update servers, or even the remote possibility of a Denial Of Service attack, they got to better manage

They really need to get their act together, one more experience like this, certainly I'm switching ISP providers this was so unacceptable!!!

[pledak]

Comcast customer support

I was an Adelphia customer who got switched over to the Comcast network last week (due to the aquisition), apparantly in the middle of this DNS problem. I could tell I had a good internet connection but no valid proxy server. When I called Comcast technical support they told me I had a bad router and I should go out and buy a new one (I have a new Cisco D-Link router which works fine). I insisted that wasn't the problem... it worked fine and the only thing that changed was the transition from Adelphia to Comcast. Finally she handed me off to second level support... After waiting over an hour on hold, their second level support team suggested it must be a router problem and gave me D-Link technical support phone number to call. I did call D-Link out of desperation and they told me that Comcast is hopelessly screwed up... gave me the Verizon 4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.3 DNS server to hard code into my DNS server spec of my TCP/IP settings and it has worked fine since (Haven't tried XBox live yet... not sure how to hardcode DNS servers there but it is probably possible).

It is amazing that Comcast technical support can be so incredibly stupid. How can they not know that their DNS servers are not working. If they do, why not simply tell me... or give me an alternate DNS server to type in? But the most criminal thing is to tell me to go out and buy a new router without even checking to see if my router is on some list of known problematic routers. What if I was an unsophisticated user and took this advise to heart? One could easily drop $100 or more on this advice... maybe they are hoping that by the time you bought the router their problem would be fixed and we would think that the router was our problem. Adelphia was no saint of a company... but Comcast so far seems so much worse.

[firstclasscool]

sarbannes violations - beware

12/06 Comcast is having massive service related issues on their Digital service - here in Atlanta everyone I know is having problems with Lockups, etc, and there is about to be a rebellion. Customer Service treats us terribly. Well, according to Sarbannes-Oxley material issues like this cannot be covered up, of which their has been no announcement to shareholders. I guess their CEO is OK with an upcoming Jail sentence, move over Bernie Ebbers! Only happens to the nicest guys.

[kpkobza]

Was much more severe than reported

This outage was not a 3 hour outage. We have been down for
almost 3 days this week. The real question is Comcast's viability
as a commercial provider. At one point Tuesday night they told
us that they could not get into a data center because they did
not have a key. Are you kidding? We have our teams dispersed
all over the country relying upon VPN's etc., hanging off of this
network and they have no alternative access plan. This one
outage has cost us 10's of thousands of dollars. They just don't
understand the level of skills and protocols needed for time
sensitive mission critical levels of performance. And they have
horrible and misleading communications - an example being
that this has been a 3 hour outage. So time for plan B.

[ktmotox]

For the last month I have been seeing Comcast DNS servers go down or not answer DNS requests quite frequently. My router's DNS addresses from Comcast were 68.87.69.146 and 68.87.85.98. I have since switched my router to use another pair of DNS servers. I've had no problems since I changed. I called Comcast last month and their customer support said that they thought one of their servers might be down. That's great. How does that help?

[skullaria]

I have had trouble all week LONG. 4 out of 7 days I had long periods of outage. Yesterday - Friday 18th - all day long with intermittent up times that were painfully slow - with text coming down and no pictures ? WTH - I keep losing dhcp settings. Tech told me 12 folks in my loop were down when I told him my dad was down here too when he said there was no outtage. Came up at 12 midnight, slow as could be - like dialup - lost dhcp settings again at 3am. I called at 9am and they insisted NO OUTTAGE (my dad and friend are out, and my neighbor)..and complained about only text downloading on all 5 PCS....suddenly while I am waiting to talk to a tech I get a gateway again. Hmmmm What ARE they doing?