Long Comcast outage in Howard County, MD

Hi folks-

This morning I noticed the cable modem connection was out. It lasted all day until coming back up around 5:30 pm. The modem gave a 3-lights- blinking thing while the connection was down.

Any ideas what was going on?

Marc

Called them all day. Got busy signals every time.

Your tips are good ones; I did them all during the outage and determined it was not a local issue. Presumably a major outage at the headend due to the support number being an endless busy signal. :-) That's why I posted here. I figured it was big enough that maybe somebody here might know.

Marc

Based on my SB4100's log, it appears to have been a DHCP server outage on Comcast's end. I could get the receive and send lights to lock but the online light would just flash. I check the log and kept seeing failed attempts to receive a reply from the DHCP server. The outage, according to the recording on the local Comcast number here in Howard county, affected Howard and Baltimore counties. After a few endless reboot cycles, I just unplugged the modem; discovered the service was back when I returned home at 6:45. I would up getting some much-needed house cleaning done instead of sitting in front of the computer all day......

I can't speak for current Comcast support, but I used to get busy signals all the time (and still have to wait when calling Adelphia support - they bought/swapped for our area). It's possible there are still some people that haven't converted from local support yet - which could account for a busy signal. Not sure if the nationwide support can get a busy or not, but I suspect they probably can with enough calls.

An outage, even a major outage, in a single market isn't going to generate so many calls that you'd get a busy signal. We'd be talking about a nationwide outage before that would happen -- and maybe not even then. (The hold time could be measured in hours, but still, you wouldn't get a busy signal.)

Perhaps there was a break in a fiber optic line that handles more than just Comcast behind both issues.

I should have mentioned, support calls here go through a local number for this part of Maryland. They are usually answered by someone local (the accent tells it all!) or diverted to a call center somewhere else (not sure where). But, the local number I dialed yesterday was busy, which had never happened to me before, even during other regional outages. Maybe due to the holiday, the phone system was set to reject most calls...

I got through to our local number here for Howard County (410.461.1156) at noon and got a recording mentioning the outage. But every other time after that that I tried to call to see if there were any updates I got nothing but busy signals.