
Ask HN: Is there something wrong with internet right now? - leesalminen
Down Detector (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;downdetector.com&#x2F;) is showing a huge spike in reports over the past 30 minutes. Many of our users are having trouble reaching our LB in Northern Virginia.<p>Anyone else having this issue or any insight as to what&#x27;s going on?
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chipuni
I'm a Comcast user in Hayward (Bay Area), CA, USA.

Some sites are easily available: Google, Yahoo.

Some sites are partially available: Twitter, Hacker News.

Many sites are completely unavailable: Down Detector.

~~~
manyxcxi
I was having maddening issues with Comcast Business in Portland, OR this
morning.

Switched over to my VPN and haven’t had any problems since.

My initial pokes at the issues I was seeing were DNS related, but even
switching the DNS hosts to Google or OpenDNS didn’t completely fix it. Maybe
they’ve got some deep packet inspection issues?

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EvilMonkeyMat
I'm in the province of Quebec (Eastern Canada), and we're having huge problems
with most websites. Strangely enough, LTE network is working on the three
providers I've tried.

~~~
hi5eyes
Southern Ontario, everything is slow as all hell

~~~
gpm
Also Southern Ontario (Toronto), I've noticed nothing. Been or reddit, HN,
many random programming websites, starcraft, etc.

I've checked all the urls people said they had problems with so far (spotify,
cloudflare, downdetector) and haven't had any.

~~~
timsco
Are you on Rogers or Bell? I'm on Bell and it's slow. Also slow at Starbucks
which is Bell...

~~~
hi5eyes
everything's back up for me

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zelon88
IT worker here... Everything is on fire and my phone is ringing like crazy.

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kordlessagain
[https://cloudflare.com](https://cloudflare.com) is down for me. Comcast in
California. HN is really slow.

~~~
EvilMonkeyMat
Same here. Slack is working great though.

~~~
stormcode
And giphy!

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oasisbob
Lots of similar reports on the outages mailing list:
[https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/outages/2017-November/0108...](https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/outages/2017-November/010891.html)

"Anyone having packet loss, please send traceroutes to the list. There is
clearly something happening, but not much useful data yet. Some traceroutes
might help narrow down the cause of the problem."

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Twisol
I'm having significant issues as well -- it happened quite suddenly an hour
ago (9:50 Pacific Time, northern California). Thought it was a local issue at
first and spent the last hour debugging my network. I think my apartment is on
Comcast, although I'm not 100% certain (one of my roommates is in charge of
it).

Spamming `date` at an affected SSH connection suggests it's entirely a
download problem, since all of the timestamps are very close, but they're
received multiple seconds apart.

Like some other commenters here, my mobile connectivity is just fine.

EDIT: Certain sites (including Hacker News) are now qualitatively more
accessible, and I'm now hitting expected speeds at
[http://testmy.net/download](http://testmy.net/download). SSH to my
DigitalOcean is also better. Here's hoping everything else smoothes out soon!

~~~
Stratoscope
Same here on Comcast in Menlo Park (CA). T-Mobile is zippy, though, so I guess
I'll switch to mobile hotspot for a while.

------
oregontechninja
Related thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15637412](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15637412)

There are I think three threads talking about this right now. This one won the
front page and topical title fight.

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ruffrey
I've read anecdotal reports of an Level3 outage that makes Comcast have poor
connectivity outside its network.

I have websites that are up right now according to monitoring tools, but they
are inaccessible to me from home.

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JonathonW
Comcast Business in Nashville is terrible right now for anything that's not
local (Facebook, Reddit, etc.). Some are worse than others (HN is just slow;
Reddit's very slow but loads eventually; Down Detector won't load at all on
our work connection now).

AT&T (in Nashville) doesn't seem to be impacted; I'm RDP'd into one of my home
machines with Uverse and everything's working great there.

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chipuni
[https://twitter.com/ReportOutage/status/927600102918811648](https://twitter.com/ReportOutage/status/927600102918811648)
shows a problem with Comcast.

That tweet links to
[http://outage.report/comcast](http://outage.report/comcast) .

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PerfectElement
Comcast says it's been resolved for most customers now:
[https://twitter.com/comcastcares/status/927636388517838848](https://twitter.com/comcastcares/status/927636388517838848)

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24gttghh
I was just thinking, shouldn't there/couldn't there be a site that aggregates
_actual_ statistics (as opposed to the crowd-sourced DownDetector) regarding
internet connectivity/health globally to provide an accurate snapshot of what
might actually be happening?

Edit:

Sorta like this[0] I suppose.

[0][https://www.akamai.com/us/en/solutions/intelligent-
platform/...](https://www.akamai.com/us/en/solutions/intelligent-
platform/visualizing-akamai/)

~~~
oasisbob
For many years there was a site called the Internet Health Report which would
show packet loss and problems between multiple carriers. It was pretty useful
until Dynatrace deep-sixed it this year.

I haven't found a suitable replacement, would be interested to hear any
suggestions.

~~~
mattbeckman
Yeah, I just headed there for the first time in a while.

DISAPPOINTED.

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muzani
Malaysian here. I'm surprising a Comcast issue would reach all the way here.

I noticed a lot of sites were working really badly, thought it was some
problem with AWS or some damaged internet artery cable.

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Giorgi
This is how WW3 will start

~~~
undersuit
Last night I had trouble with Google, Netflix, Reddit redirect links, and some
other sites. I was trying to think of places an explosion could happen that
would cause my issues.

This morning I've narrowed the explosion's epicenter down to the Wifi card in
my PC. :/

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collinmanderson
I contacted Comcast Network Operations Center. They confirmed they're aware of
the issue and working on fixing it, but didn't provide any more details.

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preben
Sweden here. Facebook and other select sites down.

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nijaru
I’m in the SF area and Comcast is between slow and not working. Cellular data
is working fine though

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uncled1023
I'm in Northern California and also having issues.

One thing I noticed is that it is only Downloads having issues. My uploads are
as fast as ever.

I then connected to my VPN, and everything is working great. I think it is
their routing that is having the issues, not the connection itself.

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Mz
Maybe. I am getting a weird issue when trying to open a page for research I am
doing for paid work. I can't get to the page and it offers to open as a PDF or
something and then fails to open anything. Just more error messages follow.

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collinmanderson
It appears to be a Comcast issue:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15637412](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15637412)

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deadcast
Dang I can't even access downdetector. I'm in California in the central
valley. Everything is very sluggish and the ol' router/modem reboot did
nothing. :/

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Animats
Second Life is reporting major problems. [1]

[1] [https://status.secondlifegrid.net/](https://status.secondlifegrid.net/)

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politician
The situation here started to improve within the last two minutes.

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lexnay
I thought it was just me. I’m in Colorado. Bandwidth seems to be reporting as
normal, however I’m having issues loading Facebook, imgur, some advertisements
on reddit, etc.

~~~
leesalminen
I'm in Colorado as well! Glad to know it's not just me. Are you on CenturyLink
or Comcast?

~~~
lexnay
Comcast

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tomberek
Yes, 4.2.2.1 DNS is down. Probably your problem.

~~~
lima
Might as well be a symptom.

~~~
kordlessagain
Symptom of it being a primary cause would be no loading, then all of a sudden
loading of site. However, I've had intermittent connection with HN, so not
sure that is necessarily the primary. Edit: clearly spell check is down.

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bproven
Issues here in San Jose area - it appears to be Comcast from what I can tell.
Same as others, cellular via ATT is fine.

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afpx
I can’t connect to VPN (on AWS), but AWS CLI is working fine. Weird. But, I’ll
just do something else for a while ...

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Fwirt
Salem, Oregon here. Everything is zippy. Seems like it's location dependent?
Just checked reddit and facebook.

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janlukacs
Everything loading blazing fast (Romania).

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dageshi
No problems reaching any site from the UK

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daxorid
None of the sites mentioned in this or other threads are down from the
vantagepoint of Cox in Arizona.

Sounds like an ISP issue.

~~~
kordlessagain
More likely BGP or similar border gateway routing things. In some cases,
gateways can become overloaded because of bad destination routes that other
gateways are routing correctly. Not that I'm an expert at this stuff. I'm not.

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blang
some in Seattle are complaining: [https://www.geekwire.com/2017/internet-
issues-plague-users-a...](https://www.geekwire.com/2017/internet-issues-
plague-users-across-u-s-monday-morning/)

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jmcgough
I thought it was just me - was about to head to a cafe. On comcast here in
Berkeley FWIW.

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enoch_r
Also Comcast (in Portland, OR) also having major issues, resolved by
tethering.

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shampto3
Gizmodo is reporting that it is a DDoS attack.

[https://gizmodo.com/this-is-probably-why-half-the-
internet-s...](https://gizmodo.com/this-is-probably-why-half-the-internet-
shut-down-today-1788062835/amp)

[edit] Dang, I thought I had checked the date. Sorry everyone!

~~~
LyndsySimon
That's a year old article, FYI.

~~~
pathseeker
Goes to show you how incredible slow this attack has made the Internet!

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abarringer
yes, lots of sites offline for me. I'm in Atlanta GA.

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pgroves
downdetector.com now seems to be down. never a good sign.

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kurtdac
Spotify has been down for me since ~1:00 EST in Toronto.

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exikyut
There should be a service sysadmins can run that sends controlled pings,
download/upload requests, etc, to specific hosts. The idea being that the
results are shared publicly.

\--

Copypasting [https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-tiny-error-shut-off-the-
in...](https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-tiny-error-shut-off-the-internet-for-
parts-of-the-us/) (dated today):

\--------------

A YEAR AGO, a DDoS attack caused internet outages around the US by targeting
the internet-infrastructure company Dyn, which provides Domain Name System
services to look up web servers. Monday saw a nationwide series of outages as
well, but with a more pedestrian cause: a misconfiguration at Level 3, an
internet backbone company—and enterprise ISP—that underpins other big
networks. Network analysts say that the misconfiguration was a routing issue
that created a ripple effect, causing problems for companies like Comcast,
Spectrum, Verizon, Cox, and RCN across the country. Level 3, whose acquisition
by CenturyLink closed recently, said in a statement to WIRED that it resolved
the issue in about 90 minutes. "Our network experienced a service disruption
affecting some customers with IP-based services," the company said. "The
disruption was caused by a configuration error." Comcast users started
reporting internet outages around the time of the Level 3 outages on Monday,
but the company said that it was monitoring "an external network issue" and
not a problem with its own infrastructure. RCN confirmed that it had some
network problems on Monday because of Level 3. The company said it had
restored RCN service by rerouting traffic to a different backbone.

The misconfiguration was a "route leak," according to Roland Dobbins, a
principal engineer at the DDoS and network-security firm Arbor Networks, which
monitors global internet operations. ISPs use "Autonomous Systems," also known
as ASes, to keep track of what IP addresses are on which networks, and route
packets of data between them. They use the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to
establish and communicate routes. For example, packets can route between
networks A and B, but network A can also route packets to network C through
network B, and so on. This is how internet service providers interoperate to
let you browse the whole internet, not just the IP addresses on their own
networks.

In a "route leak," an AS, or multiple ASes, issue incorrect information about
the IP addresses on their network, which causes inefficient routing and
failures for both the originating ISP and other ISPs trying to route traffic
through. Think of it like a series of street signs that help keep traffic
flowing in the right directions. If some of them are mislabeled or point the
wrong way, assorted chaos can ensue.

Route leaks can be malicious, sometimes called "route hijacks" or "BGP
hijacks," but Monday's incident seems to have been caused by a simple mistake
that ballooned to have national impact. Large outages caused by accidental
route leaks have cropped up before. "Folks are looking to tweak routing
policies, and make mistakes," Arbor Networks' Dobbins says. The problem could
have come as CenturyLink works to integrate the Level 3 network, or could have
stemmed from typical traffic engineering and efficiency work.

Internet outages of all sizes caused by route leaks have occurred
occasionally, but consistently, for decades. ISPs attempt to minimize them
using "route filters" that check the IP routes their peers and customers
intend to use to send and receive packets, and attempt to catch any
problematic plans. But these filters are difficult to maintain on the scale of
the modern internet, and can have their own mistakes. Monday's outages
reinforce how precarious connectivity really is, and how certain aspects of
the internet's architecture—offering flexibility and ease-of-use—can introduce
instability into what has become a vital service.

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hi5eyes
facebook, discord, reddit; all unusable

what the hell?

