Long Comcast outage in Howard County, MD

You can always call them and see if there is an outage going on.

I always check all my stuff first.

If either is having troubles, I just cycle power and normally all is well. If the modem fails to recover after cycling, then call your ISP and see what's going on.

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.