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Netflix Goes Down, People Freak Out and Discover Real Life

Facing issues with Netflix? You're not alone. Beginning at 3pm ET, users worldwide started to report connectivity issues with the on-demand movie and TV shows streaming service. Downdetector, a website which monitors outage also confirmed the outage with more than 7,000 user complaints. Netflix confirmed the outage in a tweet a few minutes ago, saying it was "aware of streaming issues and we are working quickly to solve them. We will update you when they are solved." Though the company hasn't offered an explanation for this outage, its servers could be seeing an unusual spike in traffic from people trying to binge watch Luke Cage, which was made available this weekend.

Anyone here uses Netflix and facing the issue too?

40 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Working here by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

    At about 3pm Eastern Time, I started watching episode 3 of Luke Cage. Finished that and then watched an episode from the new season of Longmire.

    Didn't see any problem at all.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:Working here by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      I noticed it wasn't working. But I was tired so just went to youtube for awhile and turned my brain off. By the time it woke up netflix was back.

    2. Re:Working here by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      But I was tired so just went to youtube for awhile and turned my brain off.

      YouTube has that effect on me too.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. I Am With TimeWarnerCable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    and this never happens. I get perfect video and audio, no compression artifacts, and low, low prices. I am in heaven. Don't you want to be in heaven? Join us. Be one of the beautiful people.

    1. Re:I Am With TimeWarnerCable by antdude · · Score: 1

      I am on there, but they suck. :(

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  3. Couldn't reach Google, either. by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was in the middle of debugging a problem caused by Comcast switching from non-static IPv6 addresses to static IPv6 addresses (causing me to get a new set of IPv6 addresses and breaking my in-home DNS because my Airport Extreme was looking for my DNS servers at the old address), so I noticed the Netflix outage, but I also noticed that I was unable to reach Google.com at the same time. I didn't bother to use traceroute to track down the problem because it went away by the time I finished disabling the AAAA records for all my domains....

    Then I read this story, and sure enough, Google showed a huge spike in outage reports at exactly the same time as Netflix. Unless Netflix uses the Google cloud for hosting (AFAIK, they use AWS, not Google), I'd imagine that this outage involved some sort of Akamai DNS problem or network routing problem or something else not specific to Netflix.

    --

    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    1. Re: Couldn't reach Google, either. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No, he is an IPv6-shyster

  4. That headline... by Grim+Beefer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know...I'm kind of sick of the whole attitude that services we pay for, for entertainment value, are supposed to be held to lower standards of accountability. People are allowed to be displeased if ANY service they pay for faces unscheduled interruption. It doesn't matter if the purpose of that service is a leisure activity, business is business. The snark around "real life" is just a way to downplay the situation due to the presumed lack of importance for the activity itself.

    Some people's work schedules, routines, etc. only allow for a bit of entertainment at certain hours of the day, each week, and it could really suck if that thing you paid for in advance isn't working, when you just want to relax after work, or whatever. God help you if you have younger children who often work a certain episode of their favorite TV show into a routine request.

    For reasons like these, and countless more, people pay Netflix to deliver content.

    1. Re:That headline... by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      You must be fun at parties.....

      Well, if you had ever been invited to a party, you'd know I am.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    2. Re:That headline... by omfgnosis · · Score: 1

      Are you at every party? That must be exhausting.

    3. Re:That headline... by omfgnosis · · Score: 1

      That $9 per month (up from $8 recently)—paid by 50 million subscribers!—pays for some of the most impressive engineering efforts on the 'net. It is not some cheap slacker service, it's best in class. Considering their global distribution, it would be absolutely shocking if they do not have full 24/7 coverage.

    4. Re:That headline... by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      Are you at every party? That must be exhausting.

      It is, but someone's gotta do it.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    5. Re:That headline... by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      When have we ever had reliable service of ANY kind, especially with entertainment? Broadcast TV is out regularly. Cable TV is unreliable, the scheduled times of programs are regularly interrupted for trivialities like football, power outages affect everyone, etc.

    6. Re:That headline... by ultranova · · Score: 1, Insightful

      How pathetic that people act like this is the end of the world or on par with nuclear war.

      So who's acting that way? Or are you simply trying to set up a strawman to distract from Netflix's failure to deliver what its customers pay it for?

      I predate the internet, so old farts like me just go, "Eh" and find something else to do.

      Thinking other people's problems are insignificant because you don't share them is an equal opportunity character flaw. Don't blame it on your age.

      Get a hobby, get a girlfriend, set fire to your neighbor's house, I don't give a shit- just stop whining about your life-giving movie stream isn't working right now.

      Those are mighty words for someone spending their weekend whining about other people on Slashdot.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    7. Re:That headline... by ShooterNeo · · Score: 1

      It's ok to be mad, but keep in mind that the engineers of an entertainment service deliberately did not engineer it to be five 9s reliable BECAUSE it's entertainment. They knew they could save a tremendous amount of money by designing it for a lower tier of reliability. Also, you paid only $9 a month, less than the cost of a plain old phone line(which is that reliable), for streaming HD video of thousands of titles AND the production of new content. As long as it only goes down for a few hours a year, you got one hell of a deal.

      Frankly, you didn't pay for a mission-critical reliable service, so quit whining.

    8. Re:That headline... by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So who's acting that way?

      The user named "Grim Beefer", to whom I was replying, that's who. And I'm sure there are plenty of others (or do you think he was the only one having a hissy fit about Netflix being down?).

      -

      Or are you simply trying to set up a strawman to distract from Netflix's failure to deliver what its customers pay it for?

      If this happened all the time or even frequently then I'd say you'd have a perfectly valid good reason to whine, but Netfix in general seems to be very reliable overall. Yes, of course people should get what they pay for, but as I said earlier, "Get a grip, nothing works 100% of the time". Netflix, the Holy Portal of Content (blessed be its name) is no fucking different. This isn't like they're cutting off your insulin or oxygen, it just means you won't be able to jerk off to Luke Cage or Stranger Things for an hour or so.

      -

      Those are mighty words for someone spending their weekend whining about other people on Slashdot.

      Lol, I'm more-or-less retired so by law I can whine about whatever I want, whenever I want. Yeah- while you're getting up and slogging your way into your lame-ass monkey job, I'm sleeping in. When you're having the life sucked out of you in a pointless, soul-crushing meeting, I'm having a sandwich or doing one of my hobbies or reading a book or taking a walk or writing or coding or shopping or visiting friends or whatever the fuck I wanna do, and that includes whining if I feel like it. :)

      So na na boo boo, honey buns.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  5. Real life? by ndogg · · Score: 1

    Hah, jokes on them. I got Amazon Prime too.

    --
    // file: mice.h
    #include "frickin_lasers.h"
  6. My life is over by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I was binge watching Lost for the third time in a row when ti went down. I got so angry that I threw my tablet down in a huff, and then went to figure out why my children were crying. Turns out they were hungry for the last 4 days! Ingrates.

  7. Be prepared. by DrYak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    God help you if you have younger children who often work a certain episode of their favorite TV show into a routine request.

    For such a highly critical use (I'm not joking here) if you only rely 100% on Netflix and don't have any disaster recovery strategy in place, you get what your deserve.

    Said as the older sibling. The arrival of DVD - a digital media that can be much more easily and reliably copied as video tapes - was a god send back then.
    Most of the parent I know nowadays have media servers at home with local copy of all the "mission critical" movies/tv series.
    And local copies downloaded on a tablet.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Be prepared. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Why do people have kids? It sounds horrible.

      Mission-critical movies, indeed. Why would anyone freely choose to be in a position where they must provide a such a steady stream of entertainment or suffer nerve-wrecking abuse from little attention-gluttons?

      Really that is just one tiny example of the cultural narrative that comes out in our media. People seem to think it is funny that brats dominate their lives, and their finances, not to mention bring new diseases home every other week, and create legal liabilities (guess who is liable if your brat goes on a vandalism spree?). On top of all that, anyone who chooses (without harming or neglecting anyone) to abstain from breeding is seen as a selfish asshole!

      Humans are weird.

    2. Re:Be prepared. by Grim+Beefer · · Score: 1

      Ok...it sounds like you're telling me that I should purchase backup media of things I already pay to stream. "Getting what I deserve", in your view, is apparently not getting the service I paid for.

      That being said... my point was not that we should be overly critical of Netflix for suffering outages. I wasn't personally affected by this outage, and am not coming from that point of view.

      My point was that just because Netflix is an entertainment service, that doesn't mean they should be held to lower standards, than any other service. In my opinion, this attitude let's a lot of companies get away with quite a lot of horseshit, particularly on mobile devices. If I run an important service to your area, such as mandatory private garbage collection, and you run a service like hosting Mmorpg servers, the profits we make at the end of the year are equally "real". The fact that one of us hosts an entertainment service shouldn't make us less accountable for delivering on that service to our customers. Inversely, customers that complain about an interruption of their service are not automatically less entitled to compensation just because the service is for a leisure activity.

      The headline was the real object of my criticism, and the editorializing of the news was unnecessary. So long as people are accurate in their criticism, and are being reasonable, there's no good reason to downplay those criticisms out of the gate.

  8. no joy by monkeyman.kix · · Score: 1

    wont work on my mac, but works on my wife's iPad same network......curious

  9. Um... there really isn't much content by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    on Netflix. When your done binge watching this season I don't see what the heck you'd do with it.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  10. Ya pretty much by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    Now I'll say that some people go WAY overboard with the amount of pissed off they get at an inconvenience but simply being annoyed and complaining is perfectly normal. When you pay for a service, you expect that service to be available when you want it during whatever its scheduled hours are, which for many services is 24/7. If it isn't, you have reason to be annoyed. Not outraged, but annoyed and wanting them to fix it.

    What's funny to me is the geeks that are hating on Netflix and acting like you should't care if it is down are probably the same kinds that get livid with rage when their internet connection dies.

  11. Streaming is a bad model. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Outages are a clear example of why streaming services are bad. If Netflix downloaded entire episodes, seasons or series when you watched them, it would be different because you could have a substantial amount of content stored locally. Unfortunately, Netflix will not do this and the very DRM happy entertainment industry will not allow this. With their original content, they could enable local caching but they have chosen to not. Streaming is a bad model.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:Streaming is a bad model. by fustakrakich · · Score: 2

      Yeah, just what I need, a room full of DVDs to schlep around.

      Streaming is a bad model.

      Works okay for water and electricity, storage is a pain in the ass. Same goes for anything else that doesn't fit in the overhead compartment. Streaming is the best thing since the microwave oven.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    2. Re:Streaming is a bad model. by motorhead · · Score: 1

      Amazon Prime Video allows downloads

      --
      Employee Of the Month - Cyberdyne Systems Corporation - September 1997
    3. Re:Streaming is a bad model. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      His alternative was digital downloads, not DVDs. But you'd known that if you'd read more than the title.

  12. Sadly no more excuses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The lawn, the trees, a few broken sprinklers and the shrubbery needed attention - maybe it was a conspiracy from Mother Nature to get off my backside and work in the yard? =)

  13. Also your distributor. You might want to check. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

    I tried to "Check out [your] sci-fi trilogy at PatriotsBooks.com [patriotsbooks.com]." Got "server not found".

    You might want to take a look at whether one of your income sources is also affected.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  14. What does the headline have to do... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ... with the summary? Not a single word about how "people" are "freaking out" or "discovering real life". This site has turned into a joke in recent years. Do they only hire absolute cretins for compiling these "news"? It makes me furious to know that somebody is getting paid for what I could do a million times better.

  15. I'm Still Upset by JimSadler · · Score: 1

    Netflix cut off Linux PCs by demanding Silverlight. I purchased a Roku unit and now I can Netflix myself until I'm silly or my eyes are burned out. However it still bothers me that Netflix does not treat Linux users well.

    1. Re:I'm Still Upset by pnutjam · · Score: 1

      Netflix work fine with chrome, on OpenSuSE and I hear Ubuntu, probably any linux. Now let me tell you about HBO go...

      It worked, but hey stopped it.

  16. Re:Blackmail by the_Bionic_lemming · · Score: 1

    Was watching daredevil all day today. Couple of reloads but nothing more than that.

    --
    _ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
  17. Re:WTF is Luke Cage? by bug_hunter · · Score: 1

    When Netflix pays for stealth marketing, do you think they want a headline "Netflix goes down, people discover real life"?
    You think they're secretly paying Slashdot or msmarsh for that?

    --
    It's turtles all the way down.
  18. Re:"people"?! by camg188 · · Score: 1

    126 million users with 7000 complaints... I'd hardly call that freaking out.

    Funny, Drudge Report has the exact same headline for this story, word for word.

  19. No problemas here by Armilar · · Score: 1

    No problems here, but real life really sucks!

  20. Re:Also your distributor. You might want to check. by dgatwood · · Score: 1

    Thanks for the heads up. I made a mass change to the DNS servers for all my domains recently to remove two old DNS server IPs as I phase out my old ISP, and I forgot that two of my domains are hosted by DreamHost/CloudFlare when I did the mass change. That wouldn't have been a big deal, except that when I set up CloudFlare, I foolishly disabled those two domains on my main DNS server. As a result, when I pointed all the WhoIS records at my own DNS server, it didn't respond at all. :-/

    I've reenabled the domains on my own DNS servers, and my home server is now responding for the site until the domain record changes bubble up to the root servers and CloudFlare/DreamHost takes over.

    Ah, the joys of DNS.

    --

    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  21. Own your content by DrYak · · Score: 1

    Ok...it sounds like you're telling me that I should purchase backup media of things I already pay to stream.

    Saddly, that's the exact current situation.
    You do NOT own a copy of the medium, what you OWN is simply an authorisation to stream it.
    At any point of time you could lose access to this media
    (same with DRM'ed e-books auto-erasing themselves from e-readers, etc.)
    You do not own a movie, you own the right to stream when available.

    The better solution for things that you *absolutely desperately need available under any circumstance*, is to OWN a copy of the media, and then exercice the *Fair Use* exception granted by your local jurisdictions and make your own extra backup copies.
    (Note: If you leave in a jurisdiction where your local digital copy law prevents you from making such copies, then your local law is broken. I hope for you you leave in a direct democracy where you can actually influence the laws).

    Again, the example was a movie that parents absolutely desperately need for their kids. Not any random movie, but a "mission critical"-one.
    Rely on an external resource that could go down is asking for trouble. You *need* to jump through the hoops to *guarantee* that you have a backup.
    And again that's the situation in practice: all my colleagues with kids have some media-server solution or other (most frequently based on Plex + Synology, hassle free). Same in my family, when I was yonger, I helped my parents duplicate tapes for a mentally-challenged brother, and we progressively switched to other backup techniques as technology progressed.

    "Getting what I deserve", in your view, is apparently not getting the service I paid for.

    At approx. ~15 USD / months (I don't know what Netflix charges in the US, but thats what Netflix charges here around and that dead fucking cheap given the local cost of life), yup you *DO* get what you paid for.
    Want to be as cheap as fuck - service will go down occasionally.
    Want to have high availability ? Go for a slightly more expensive solution that puts more efforts into disaster recovery.
    (e.g.: The streaming services offered by internet service provider here around are more expensive than Netflix for similar offer, but I haven't heard of outage.
    But I haven't heard of Netflix outage here around neither).

    My point was that just because Netflix is an entertainment service, that doesn't mean they should be held to lower standards, than any other service. In my opinion, this attitude let's a lot of companies get away with quite a lot of horseshit, particularly on mobile devices.

    Hey, I work in healthscare ! (Among other), Let's but Netflix and medical companies at the same level of standards ! It's going to be great for both, which ever the direction.

    The fact that one of us hosts an entertainment service shouldn't make us less accountable for delivering on that service to our customers.

    On the other hand, there's less danger of people dying if an *entertainment* service goes down.
    Depending at which level you are on Baselow's pyramid, a loss of service could incure much more risks. And these company are legally required to put much more efforts into it.

    Inversely, customers that complain about an interruption of their service are not automatically less entitled to compensation just because the service is for a leisure activity.

    No, but I they went for the cheap-ass solution they shouldn't wonder if it goes down much often.

    There's difference if a service that you pay a few bucks per months to have a few laughs in front of your TV goes down.
    Compared to when a services that costs several thousands monthly and needs to provide the surgeon with all the extra data (medical imagery) he might need.

    Or in other words, there's a reason why Netflix is so cheap and
    - you shouldn't be surprised when it gows down
    - you shouldn't rely

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Own your content by Grim+Beefer · · Score: 1

      I understand most of the points you're making, but I think you're on a tangent of sorts. I'm not arguing that Netflix is more important than crucial healthcare infrastructure, or even basic utility services (like my garbage collection example).

      My argument is that the relative importance, function, or price, of a service is entirely, utterly, 100% irrelevant, for the same exact reason that it's entirely irrelevant
      what the purpose, function, or price, of a consumer good is, in valuing consumer rights.

      If you purchase consumer goods, it doesn't matter how "cheap" or "useless' the product is. If your $1 pair of shoelaces is defective - you can take them back and get a refund, unless you bought the goods under specific predetermined conditions (all sales final, etc.).

      Even cheap pieces of junk have warranties and return policies. We shouldn't be giving services ANY more slack when it comes to consumer rights.