Time Warner Cable Experiences Nationwide Internet Outage

Wolfrider (856) writes Reports are coming in from multiple U.S. states that TWC is having a major Internet outage since early this morning. ... TWC's customer service reps are reportedly a bit overwhelmed by call volume at the moment, and no ETA yet. According to CNET, most locations should be more-or-less back online as of 7 a.m. EDT or so (my TWC connection came back around 7:30 a.m. EDT). TWC says it's maintenance gone wrong: In response to a query by CNET, Time Warner Cable issued this statement: "At 430am ET this morning during our routine network maintenance, an issue with our Internet backbone created disruption with our Internet and On Demand services. As of 6am ET services were largely restored as updates continue to bring all customers back online."

Comments

shoot the admins

[alen]

this level of incompetence clearly deserves the penalty of death
my kids woke up this morning and couldn't watch their Phineas and Ferb cartoons. my oldest kid had to actually read a book to pass the time before camp and a trip to the museum

I was affected

[Anonymous Coward]

My time Warner went out sometime around 4:30 EST this morning, oddly enough it came back up before I was awake (IRC logged my disconnect) and with IPv6 service finally, it's a good chance they had a hiccup doing a mass switch to IPv6

Comcast

[bondsbw]

TWC: "Surely only Comcast can save us! Please allow the merger!"
Government: "Well golly gee, what a great idea!"

As a Time Warner User

[Shadow99_1]

I am on Time Warner at home and when I got up this morning I found I couldn't check my email like I do every morning. I spent a bit of time on it trying to figure out what they had done to the connection and found I could not connect to their DNS servers, but I could connect to remote IPs and even trace route them just fine.

I had to head into work, so I didn't stay to actually call them... But I'm hardly surprised if they have screwed up their DNS. I had changed my DNS settings to use Google's DNS servers for a long time because theirs had issues. More recently I rebuilt my PC and I hadn't changed the settings again so they still use Time Warner's DHCP settings to pull DNS server settings.

And they're the LESS evil giant cable company

[damn_registrars]

I was forced (by moving) to switch from TWC to Comcast. I can tell you from experience that everything that is bad about TWC is at least 5x worse with Comcast. TWC fixed this in a matter of hours; if it were Comcast they would have billed the customers for the problem and it wouldn't be working until at least Monday.

Re:There have been worse outages

[Charliemopps]

The level of stress and anxiety on the admins during these outages would break most people. I used to do that and literally could not take it, so I switched to a less stressful job. At least with Cable companies it's only TV and Internet, I had to deal with phones as well. We literally had a man DIE during one of our outages because his family couldn't call 911. Even with data lines only all kinds of things break... Police stations data interconnects... hospitals lose access to databases... power companies might not be able to dispatch. Even small outages are a very big deal, and are taken very seriously. The residential side is irritating but not that big of a deal. It's the commercial side that makes it hard to sleep at night sometimes. The guys that do this, do care... if they didn't they sure as hell wouldn't put up with the miserable job.

clarifying rumors:

[nimbius]

Several rumors about this outage are circulating, so being as I work at Time Warner i thought id dispell them.

1.Your call is important to us: this is a longstanding glitch in our callcenter software. at no point do any of us sincerely have any valued interest in you, or your communication.
2.We are working to resolve the issue quickly: not likely. Tina started her lunch break at like, 10 am. im posting this from the beerpong tavern up the road. My manager is asleep in the datacenter. nick and rob from networking didnt show up today because they had like, 11 vodkas last night and that means theyll be on from vpn around 6 pm to sign their timesheet.
3.This was caused by routine maintenance: again, a rumor. Dale and I wanted a kegerator in the NOC but we were already using the fridge in there for bottled beers. Instead we emptied a rack and made space. we're calling it cellar temperature but really its a bit warmer.
4.You are all valued customers: I dont know where people get this idea. have you tried calling? seriously most of the phone tree is a circular loop. we have maybe 4 phones in this office and its incredibly difficult to order pizza and wings while you "people" keep inundating us with sob stories about your internet.

anyhow sign up for the bundle, or 3 play or whatever it is the coked up hobo in marketing calls it these days. maybe that will help, or not, i dont know. that food truck with the salvadorian food is outside again and daddy needs a pupusa so, whatever.