back to article Comcast's mega-outage 'solution'... Have you tried turning your router off and on again?

After a day without service, Comcast has suggested its business voice customers restart their modems if they're still having connectivity problems. The American comms giant has been trying to recover from a voice service outage that began on Wednesday morning and has affected customers in cities across the States. …

  1. Mark 85

    Asked to elaborate on the cause of the outage, the comms biz did not immediately respond.

    Well.. something broke. The next obvious question is "what was it that broke?" followed by "can you fix it?" Interesting that "all engineers are addressing the problem" which says it's probably something big went tits up in more than one location.

    1. LenG

      Or that they have no idea what is wrong and all their engineers are running around like headless chickens

      1. Chairman of the Bored

        Running around like chickens?

        Never works, things just get clucked up.

        1. SotarrTheWizard
          Trollface

          Re: Running around like chickens?

          In other words, as usual, Comcast's "service" has laid an egg. . . .

        2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

          Re: Running around like chickens?

          Never works, things just get clucked up.

          Eggzactly. Especially as Comcast management are only out to feather their own nests..

    2. JohnFen

      ""all engineers are addressing the problem" which says it's probably something big went tits up in more than one location."

      Or that it's just the thing a company has to say when something goes wrong on this scale. My bet is on some engineer fat-fingering a router or server configuration somewhere.

      1. caitlin.bestler

        One fat finger?

        if your voice service provider has designed their sysgtems so that one fat, or even malicious, finger can bring this much service down for this long then you need to find a new voice service provider.

        1. JohnFen

          Re: One fat finger?

          Yes, well, this is Comcast we're talking about. I question the judgement of anyone who chose them as their VoIP provider in the first place.

  2. oldgreyguy

    Duh!!!

    "A number of complaints scold Comcast for lost revenue while others criticize the company for poor support."

    I realize that quite a few customers did not choose Comcast because of buyouts, mergers, but the vast majority DID choose Comcast for their business communications needs...................... Comcast = Support... not in this lifetime

    Was there no due diligence prior to the decision. Or was support not key to that decision making process? What a bunch of Maroons..... nyuck, nyuck

    1. Chloe Cresswell Silver badge

      Re: Duh!!!

      Well, given the US market for this stuff, did they have much of a choice but comcast?

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. JohnFen

        Re: Duh!!!

        For phone service? Yes, there's a lot more choice in phone service than there is in internet service.

      3. tom dial Silver badge

        Re: Duh!!!

        For voice, essentially all of them had at least the choice of the local Bell descendant. That might or might not have dealt with Internet as well, and some probably chose Comcast because of lower price and comparable performance promises or because it provided voice and Internet service as a package.

    2. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Re: Duh!!!

      > was support not key to that decision making process

      Are you kidding "Which one's cheapest? ... ok, that one."

    3. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Duh!!!

      Came to say the same thing. That Comcast is a shitbird of a company is something I thought was common knowledge by now.

  3. JWLong

    Mama Said:

    Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

    1. yoganmahew

      Re: Mama Said:

      Mama didn't have co-located testicles.

      .

      .

      .

      .

      .

      .

      .Well, your mama did!

      1. JWLong

        Re: Mama Said:

        yoganmahew

        Yo mama got 4 legs and 8 tits. Now, go back to your cousin (wife).

        1. yoganmahew

          Re: Mama Said:

          Touche!

  4. vtcodger Silver badge

    As an Ex-Comcast Customer ...

    Comcast has actually acknowledged that there is a problem? And they are probably trying to fix it? Let me assure you, that's a step up from my experiences with Comcast.

    1. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: As an Ex-Comcast Customer ...

      Well, this is their business grade service, after all.

      1. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

        Re: As an Ex-Comcast Customer ...

        Ah Comcast Business. Their SLA requires that should you have an outage, they'll immediately dispatch a technician to swap your premises modem with different one. Not necessarily a working one - whatever's in the Comcast van that powers up and doesn't smell too much like cat pee.

  5. ma1010
    Big Brother

    Official Statement from Crapcast

    We're very sorry for any inconvenience the outage may have caused. Well, actually, no, we're not. Frankly, we don't give a fuck one way or the other.

    And, no, before any of you ask, you're not going to get an adjustment on your bills for the time we provided you with no service, nor will we compensate you for any lost revenues. The only thing we care about is that WE don't lose any revenue, so be sure to send us OUR money every month. If you don't like the way we do you business, you can try one of our twin sisters, AKA "the competition." (chuckle) You'll quickly find that they don't give a crap about your little problems, either.

    Welcome to the Oligopoly, darlings. It's the way of the future. Remember the bit about a boot stamping on a human face? Well, it's not one boot. We'll ALL be putting the boot in. Suck it up, little "consumer."

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Official Statement from Crapcast

      I've always said the wet dream American business is one that charges people and delivers nothing and people are forced to pay for it.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Official Statement from Crapcast

      Well said and precisely the attitude expressed by Comcast when we report technical issues. Comcast essentially says the same about their broken anti-spam computer blockage of legitimate international e-mail sent to U.S. Comcast customers including businesses from reputable ISPs in Europe, Australia, Asia, etc. The illegal blockage of legitimate international e-mail is costing businesses in the U.S. and elsewhere millions annually.

      The FCC has done nothing other than to send the complaints to Comcast who tells the FCC that the illegal computer controlled anti-spam blockage system doesn't exist even when it has been proven by numerous technical entities to not only exist, but that it is illegally blocking legitimate e-mail. There is no accountability of cable companies and Telcos in the U.S.

      1. tip pc Silver badge

        Re: Official Statement from Crapcast

        Simply use a different email provider or make your own email system. There are plenty of free email services.

  6. Shadow Systems

    "If you still have a problem, please give us a call."

    Would that be a call over those VOIP lines that don't work?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BT did that to me once a long time back. Blaming any kind of issue on "your" modem.

    They turn up with a consumer grade modem in nice plastic faux wood, look at our gear with digital displays showing automated diagnosis.

    The engineer goes, "oh, its probably not your modems then". took them days to isolate the actual cable fault.

  8. elvisimprsntr

    While I understand the economics of combining services with a single company, you place your business at risk doing so. Businesses should have a emergency plan in place to forward calls to a different number during a service outage.

    There is a lot to be said for having separate service providers and/or redundancy. I have dual WAN (ATT Fiber and TMobile LTE) failover for exactly this type of scenario.

    1. Dal90

      >I have dual WAN (ATT Fiber and TMobile LTE) failover

      >for exactly this type of scenario.

      1)

      Charter had a fiber optic line cut in my town last week.

      No problem, I can tether to my iPhone or use the corporate VzW hotspot that they provide specifically so I can do remote support if Charter is down...

      Barely any voice signal strength, no data on VzW.

      I'm guessing VzW was renting dark fiber capacity from Charter as I know from past tests their Network Layer was separate.

      2)

      Work has both Charter & Verizon fiber for redundant ISPs, confirmed that they use separate fiber over separate routes to our 2500 employee sized corporate campus.

      Started having issues with traffic going to a handful of sites, but some of which were heavily hit by automated processes. Some tracerouting around showed the failures were going out Charter and had a CenturyLink (Level3) router in Boston in common...but the traceroutes also showed that both Charter AND Verizon were using the same Verizon infrastructure between their (separate) local offices and the same facility in Boston...just once it hit Boston the traffic over Charter was routed very CenturyLink for the trip to Atlanta, while Verizon looked like it kept it on it's own network.

      I'm just glad I'm not on the network team that had to coordinate a Charter/Verizon/CenturyLink conference call :D 24 hours for us to diagnose and inform Charter (who was getting complaints to the of sporadic problems throughout our area from other customers but hadn't figured it out themselves), 48 more hours before Charter updated the ticket that CenturyLink acknowledged there was an issue on their router, another 24 hours for CenturyLink to fix it.

      My conclusion: That the frigging internet works as well as often is impressive, because there is not as much true resiliency as most of think, hope, or fantasize there is. It would take a lot more project management, engineering, and architecture work than most companies will put into it.

  9. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
    WTF?

    could cost lives

    "A meal service for the elderly even suggested its inability to communicate in the event of an emergency could cost lives"

    Seriously, any such issue I would go to the nearest eletrical store and demand they sell me all their Mobile phones with PAYG sims. Have a backup plan in place when critical infrastructure goes down.

    1. JohnFen

      Re: could cost lives

      "Have a backup plan in place when critical infrastructure goes down."

      This. And don't rely on Comcast for critical infrastructure to begin with.

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