Comcast explains outages
April 15, 2005 by Mike Wendland
Comcast has now explained the cause behind three nights of server problems that have slowed the system over the past week or so. Blame it on centralization of its servers.
Several months ago, two DNS name server clusters - one in New Jersey, the other outside Denver - replaced the network of regional name servers Comcast used to run. For still unknown reasons, those two national server clusters started choking last week.
The president of Comcast’s Midwest Division tells me he thinks they’ve solved the problem by switching back to regional servers until the centralized servers can be debugged. At any rate, last night seems to have been a normal Comcast night. MIKE WENDLAND: Comcast has new Internet troubles
In Saint Paul Minnesota, we had lack of service the first 2 weeks of March, after a cable upgrade.? This week, we have come to except no service beginning about 8:30pm and for the next several hours, on Tuesday, Wednesday and again last night, Thursday - the night before taxes are due.
Gayle
had problems with my Comcast Internet service “blipping in and out” the week before Easter and Easter weekend.? I called Comcast and asked if they were having problems, only to be told
- “NO”
- “Oh, I see you don’t have one of our modems.”?
- Oh, I see you’re not subscribing to our ,,,,, service, since you’re not and the problem is…..? you may have to pay $20.”?
I scheduled a repair appt. but ended up cancelling after I sat and?assessed the problem I was experiencing.??All indicators to pointed to a Comcast problem.? I cancelled the service call and thought I would ride the tide until the computer techies got on to it.
So
Thanks for exposing another one of Comcast’s dirty little secrets. Comcast’s “intermittent” service interruptions are common, preventing?reliable use of VPN connections to the office. Hitting “reload” (with Firefox) or refresh with IE 6?is a necessary procedure if you want to see a web page.
Comcast serves only the Wall Street analysts who demand increased quarterly profits instead of putting the customer first (who pays the bills).
I had not thought of the DNS server change but will utilize that approach as a backup.
Alan
I just finished reading? your article concerning the Comcast Problem.
I have had some problems with being unable to connect to the internet through Comcast this past week.? I have called twice and have received very polite help and they sent out a technician the same day. In fact, I have had a new cable installed (which still needs to be buried) which boosted my connection.
Just wanted to let you know that some of us have been helped.? Although, in the past couple of nights when the internet has gone down, we were unable to get through.? We got a recording advising us to unplug the modem for 30-45 seconds and replug.? Believe it or not, this did work!
Janice
Brighton, MI
I was still experiencing problems late Thursday night/early Friday morning (04/14-15/05) with Comcast, despite the claim that they have switched back to regional servers; and I had also been suffering similar episodes of slowdowns in the recent past. But, more to the point of this post, one reason they got overwhelmed this week, I suspect, may have to do with the fact that the Internal Revenue Service has made it possible this year for people to prepare their taxes on-line (for free) using many of the same commercial tax preparation packages one formerly had to purchase. Also, I suspect that millions of AT&T shareholders had to access the ATT website to figure out information they needed to file their taxes this year or even to provide to their paid preparers (for reasons I won’t bother to specify here).
MikeyD
Southfield, MI
Thank you for this information Mr. Wendland.
A company with it’s head out of it’s posterior would have immediately sent a simple email to each customer saying “hey sorry, it’s our fault - we’re working on it”. That’s all it would take.
Instead this company?does nothing - or even actively tries to hide.
(5) updates came from Microsoft Windows XP the same time this was happening.
So of course I uninstalled each one one at a time to see if this was the cause.
Nothing worked so I did a restore to a point weeks ago - losing the new programs I recently installed.
Still nothing -?after all the money I pay to this crap of a company I have to read about the problem in the newspaper.
And they wonder why they are the most hated and despised company since?Michigan Bell.
I am another frustrated Comast high-speed internet customer who received an odd excuse from their tech support staff yesterday: the multiple outages are due to “transitional”/seasonal occurrences in the spring and fall when road salt which has evaporated in the air has clung to the aerial cable lines and squirrels and “woodland critters” attracted to the salt chew through the cable lines.
This laughable (and seemingly untruthful) response from technician Patrick caused me to feel like I’d been given a Dilbert and Wally type of excuse: here’s the Dumb Blonde Explanation #3 from the Tech Support play book.
It is not appropriate for representatives of the company to give customers answers such as this, no matter how tired they are of receiving customer complaint calls. I would rather be told that they are investigating the problem and don’t have a public response at this time than be treated in such a manner.
I appreciated your coverage of the matter & evoking an admission of the real problem from company officials.
As late as 7:30 am today at home, I could not get thru to the internet or my mail service, so the system is still messed up.
Bill in Detroit
In your column RE Comcast DNS issues, you raise the question of whether it’s “ethical” to use another provider’s DNS for recursive lookups (host resolution) rather the DNS of the provider of yourprovider.
Since it is pretty straightforward for an ISP to limit access to
their DNS servers to only those to whom the ISP provides service (or to any discrete network[s] they choose), it is an operational issue rather than an ethical issue. In other words, it’s not unethical (or illegal) for you to walk across my front yard if there’s no fence around it, but it is if the lot is enclosed, and you have to jump the fence to get in.
regards,
jim moran
It started Tuesday 4/12/2005 at night. I reset my cable modem and router. The computer too. It was late so I just gave up and went to bed.
The next morning it worked. I guess it was around noon time and no Internet again. I seen my Gmail say something like could not connect to DNS server. I know a IP of one that is not comcast and I put that as the first on in my router. Internet has been working good from then.
Thank you for putting the story in the Detroit Free Press! I would of not know what was wrong. I was thinking comcast was installing some new stuff to make the cable speed faster like they said they would by now.
-Raymond Day
“Remember 2002, when Comcast Internet users encountered widespread problems following the company’s takeover of part of the troubled Road Runner network? Back then, it took days for Comcast to concede the magnitude of the issues and its poor response to customers.” The only part of Road Runner’s network at that time that was troubled was Comcast’s contract with Road Runner, driving Comcast to cut customers over to their new service that was no where near ready for paying customers at the time (the most plausible theory that I have seen to date was that Road Runner service to former MediaOne customers in Southeast Michigan was piggybacked on AT&T Broadband’s contract with Road Runner for service to former MediaOne areas. “Project Redwood” negated AT&T Broadband’s need for continued access to Road Runner and Comcast was either unwilling or unable to negotiate a contract extension for SEM). To this day, I have yet to see Comcast “concede” anything regarding those issues, let alone provide a rational reason as to the “whys”. The most common method for a customer to get any response from Comcast during that era was to file a complaint with the Michigan Attorney General’s office.