[ISN] Another broadband outage strikes Comcast

[InfoSec News]

Forwarded from: Richard Forno <rforno at infowarrior.org>

[Two weeks ago it was Rolex spam, last week, flu, this week, Comcast 
(who we use for Internet) has been flaking out. It can be really 
challenging sending out InfoSec News at times. ;)   - WK] 


By Jim Hu
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 13, 2005,
By Jim Hu
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

http://news.com.com/Another+broadband+outage+strikes+Comcast/2100-1034_3-5669961.html

Comcast's high-speed Internet service suffered nationwide outages for
the second time in six days Tuesday, which the cable giant blamed on
issues related to its domain name servers.

The three-hour outage came after a similar issue crippled Comcast
Thursday for six hours. Both involved issues with the cable giant's
domain name servers, which translate and route Web page requests from
users. Although Internet applications such as instant messaging could
continue to operate, all Web site requests either did not respond or
were sluggish.

A Comcast spokeswoman said Tuesday night's outage was first noticed
about 6:30 p.m. PT and service was restored about three hours later.

"We were able to identify the situation right away," Comcast
spokeswoman Jeanne Russo said. "We are working with the (hardware)
vendor to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Russo declined to identify Comcast's hardware vendor. Me TV: Finally,
you are in control

Throughout online message boards, including Comcast's own forum,
subscribers fumed at the company's second outage in four days. Michael
Spoonauer, a software engineer and Comcast customer from Quincy,
Mass., noticed the issue Tuesday evening when Web site requests
continued to time out. Spoonauer said Comcast's support representative
told him that that the network was experiencing an unscheduled outage
due to server maintenance.

Spoonauer bristled at Comcast for not informing its users about the
outage, and added that the company's Web site offered little
information about why the service was down again.

"I would consider it to be corporately responsible to send a message
to customers saying what happened, why it happened and what they're
going to be doing to prevent it," Spoonauer said. "It's not too much
to ask from a company."

Comcast's Russo said the company communicates issues through areas on
its Web site and sometimes through recorded messages that greet
callers.

Comcast is the nation's largest broadband Internet access provider. It
reported 7 million subscribers at the end of 2004.