Giant Time Warner outage in midwest

[Fritzo]

FYI- Time Warner is down in a good chunk of the mid-west due to a massive DNS server failure. Using 8.8.8.8 for DNS works in the meantime.

http://downdetector.com/status/time-warner-cable/map/

 

[vi edit]

Well that explains things. Netflix app was working fine but web is toast.

 

[lxskllr]

That's what happens when people share a connection, and they can't afford to keep the pipes going. You should be ashamed of yourself. You know who you are...

 

[vi edit]

No more sharing dirty hot spots.

 

[Jeff7]

Wow, I'm on the border.

I loves me some OpenDNS.


I wonder if that's why Google Maps was basically unusable for me earlier today. :\
It loaded, but entering an address was just met with "Loading........"
...huh, nope, it looks like this is quite recent. Odd.
Otherwise I didn't really notice anything. Phew.


Some vendors are in that area though. Ohio sure didn't have a good day.
Gotta drive out west to Missurah. I hear they got some Internet out there.

That's what happens when people share a connection, and they can't afford to keep the pipes going. You should be ashamed of yourself. You know who you are...

The tubes need to be arranged in parallel, not as a series.

 

[balloonshark]

I'm guessing this affects other ISPs. I have Suddenlink in WV with Open DNS. Practically every site is slow and many are unreachable.

 

[Fritzo]

I'm guessing this affects other ISPs. I have Suddenlink in WV with Open DNS. Practically every site is slow and many are unreachable.

Time Warner probably has a direct link to one of the 9 major Internet backbones. I'm betting their datacenter link to that backbone failed. If it wasn't a router failure, I'm betting on hackery.

 

[balloonshark]

Time Warner probably has a direct link to one of the 9 major Internet backbones. I'm betting their datacenter link to that backbone failed. If it wasn't a router failure, I'm betting on hackery.

My connection is still very slow. Going to a site or dialing a number (Vonage) rarely works on the first try.

 

[Fritzo]

My connection is still very slow. Going to a site or dialing a number (Vonage) rarely works on the first try.

Are you using alternate DNS or Time Warner's?

If you can, do a pathping to www.google.com and post the results. I'm curious of the routing going on there.

 

[balloonshark]

I'm using opendns in my router. My isp is Suddenlink. I get a general failure when trying pathping.

Edit:Things are starting to work a little better.

 

[ControlD]

Thanks for the information OP. My wife was complaining last night about the internet being slow (Ohio), so I tried it and noticed that DNS lookups were taking forever. I immediately changed my router over to the Google DNS to see what would happen and like magic everything was back to normal speed.

I also was getting a lot of "Channel Not Authorized" errors on my Tivo last night. Not sure if that is related or not.

 

[John Connor]

One reason why I use OpenDNS. Have used them since circa '09.

 

[Crusty]

I stopped using my ISP's DNS servers over a decade ago....

 

[MtnMan]

I stopped using my ISP's DNS servers over a decade ago....

This, I use OpenDNS and Google

 

[Blintok]

i would not call that mid-west. Mid-west is more like a line north/south along the Dakotas, Montana border areas.

 

[brianmanahan]

i would not call that mid-west. Mid-west is more like a line north/south along the Dakotas, Montana border areas.

 

[SketchMaster]

Down for Austin as well.

Edit: Whoa... Comcast is hit also...

http://downdetector.com/status/comcast-xfinity/map/

 

[AdamK47]

The Internet is overrated anyways.

 

[edro]

Yeah, it hit us. I opened the same map and was WTF, Ohio is dead.

 

[marvdmartian]

I'm in northern Texas, and this morning was having sporadic service on my Road Runner internet. It would run fine for a while, then drop. Did it about 5 times, in a 3 hour period, before it finally settled down.

Meanwhile, friends in upstate NY were having issues too, with internet and TV service via TWC.

 

[DrDoug]

I'm picturing that crazy guy in the air traffic control tower in the movie Airplane who pulls the plug on the runway lights but now he's in the server room. :biggrin:

 

[zinfamous]

I stopped using my ISP's DNS servers over a decade ago....

This, I use OpenDNS and Google

Question for an idiot such as myself:

What does this mean, how would it benefit me, and how does one do this?

 

[Pheran]

Question for an idiot such as myself:

What does this mean, how would it benefit me, and how does one do this?

Doing this is not necessarily a good idea. Some streaming providers (e.g. Netflix) use DNS load balancing to route you to the closest streaming servers. Configuring alternate DNS servers can break this process and give you suboptimal streaming performance.

 

[zinfamous]

Doing this is not necessarily a good idea. Some streaming providers (e.g. Netflix) use DNS load balancing to route you to the closest streaming servers. Configuring alternate DNS servers can break this process and give you suboptimal streaming performance.

well, OK. that's relevant enough to inform me that I don't need to bother with this.

 

[Fritzo]

Doing this is not necessarily a good idea. Some streaming providers (e.g. Netflix) use DNS load balancing to route you to the closest streaming servers. Configuring alternate DNS servers can break this process and give you suboptimal streaming performance.

Those streaming servers are often overloaded. Using an alternate DNS server will often get you around that.

Some providers also route traffic to their cache servers no matter who's DNS you use (ATT's UVerse does this in some areas).