Time Warner Cable Experiences Nationwide Internet Outage 133
Wolfrider (856) writes Reports are coming in from multiple U.S. states that TWC is having a major Internet outage since early this morning. ... TWC's customer service reps are reportedly a bit overwhelmed by call volume at the moment, and no ETA yet.
According to CNET, most locations should be more-or-less back online as of 7 a.m. EDT or so (my TWC connection came back around 7:30 a.m. EDT). TWC says it's maintenance gone wrong: In response to a query by CNET, Time Warner Cable issued this statement: "At 430am ET this morning during our routine network maintenance, an issue with our Internet backbone created disruption with our Internet and On Demand services. As of 6am ET services were largely restored as updates continue to bring all customers back online."
And they're the LESS evil giant cable company (Score:5, Interesting)
Screw-up? (Score:5, Interesting)
Did the NSA screw up again while tapping in into the TW infrastructure? I mean, if the manage to knock whole countries of the Internet by doing so, I wouldn't be surprised if they knocked a few ISP offline now and then.
Re:There have been worse outages (Score:5, Interesting)
The level of stress and anxiety on the admins during these outages would break most people. I used to do that and literally could not take it, so I switched to a less stressful job. At least with Cable companies it's only TV and Internet, I had to deal with phones as well. We literally had a man DIE during one of our outages because his family couldn't call 911. Even with data lines only all kinds of things break... Police stations data interconnects... hospitals lose access to databases... power companies might not be able to dispatch. Even small outages are a very big deal, and are taken very seriously. The residential side is irritating but not that big of a deal. It's the commercial side that makes it hard to sleep at night sometimes. The guys that do this, do care... if they didn't they sure as hell wouldn't put up with the miserable job.
Re:shoot the admins (Score:5, Interesting)
I get the sarcasm, but this outage almost screwed me - I was scheduled to work from home today so I could be here for a service appointment. With no data service, I can't do that.
There are real uses for home Internet connections besides porn and Twitter, you know. =)