Comcast Internet Outage Affects Customers All Across US

Internet outages are fairly common, but when a company’s services are down in multiple states and cities across the country, it’s more than just a small problem. The issue has since been addressed and internet access has been restored in most of the affected areas. However, this shows how vulnerable major carrier networks can be and how widespread the effects are.

The company Downdetector provided a map of the places affected by the outage, where customers were getting either no connection or slow connection. The outage seems to have only applied to the internet service, however, as TV and landline connections remained intact during the incident.

Comcast’s Xfinity internet service went down in cities that include Portland, Chicago, New York, Houston, and Boston, Fortune reports. That is a fairly widespread list of areas affected by the internet outage, the cause of which apparently has to do with a configuration error. The firm Level 3 Network Ops confirmed as much in a recent Tweet.

“On Nov. 6, our network experienced a disruption affecting some IP customers due to a configuration error. All are restored,” the Tweet reads.

Comcast also offered the same explanation as it issued a statement addressing the matter, The Verge reports.

"On Monday, November 6th, our network experienced a service disruption affecting some customers with IP-based services. The disruption was caused by a configuration error. We know how important these services are to our customers. Our technicians were able to restore service within approximately 90 minutes," the statement reads.

This is an example of how managing services in one giant network can have its downsides. If one configuration error can bring down services all across the U.S., what’s to stop hackers from taking advantage of such a vulnerability? One well-placed malware could cripple the online infrastructure of major online companies, which is not a far-fetched scenario given how frequent international hacking incidents are becoming.