Is Half the Internet down?

[rudeguy]

Originally posted by: Steve
My Comcast worked fine yesterday, as did my parents' but apparently my mom tried to call my AT&T cell and got a "This number has been disconnected" message.

Did you pay your bill?

 

[Steve]

Originally posted by: rudeguy

Originally posted by: Steve
My Comcast worked fine yesterday, as did my parents' but apparently my mom tried to call my AT&T cell and got a "This number has been disconnected" message.

Did you pay your bill?

My bills pay automatically online, and my account is current. The article I linked explains why she got that message.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Steve
Storm Causes AT&T Outage Across Midwest

"AT&T left users across several Midwestern states without cellular phone service yesterday. The outage apparently resulted from a power failure at a Michigan switching center and spread to affect Level3 Internet communications. The powerful windstorm also left 400,000 users without electricity. Interestingly, except for a few reports in Chicago and Indianapolis papers, AT&T has managed to keep this out of the mainstream media. Widespread communication failures also followed Hurricane Ike in Texas earlier this year. With the increasing trend for users to drop landlines and rely only on cell phones, this is becoming an emergency preparedness issue."

I suppose anyone peering on Level 3 would be affected by yesterday's outages.

Poor planning and design. You have to assume any switching center can disappear at anytime for any reason. tsk, tsk L3.