Comments

1
Interesting. Comcast uses fiber. I didn't know that. Because I asked around via that CenturyLink thread as to how they do it and was told that all they use is COAX. Well apparently not.
2
Damnit Comcrap! Oh wait, it's 60 degrees and sunny out.
3
I'd rather have a corporate ISP committed to quality service, despite inevitable outages that any provider corporate or public would have on occasion. At least with the corporate ISP, you have a company committed to making a profit with better quality rather than a public venture with limited funds, grasps at taxpayer revenue, contentious unions, and a likely lack of enough committment for research, development, and innovation.
4
40 Gbps at multiple ports at the UW and two 100 Gbps ports.
5
The end result of capitalism is monopolies. Capitalism is a snake eating its own tail.
6
I'm all in favor of municipal networks, but to say a publicly owned system couldn't be subject to a major disruption like a fiber cut is a stretch.
7
Meanwhile, the Upgrade Seattle website is offline.
8
I work for comcast technical support and live in seattle where my area is also affected and I deeply apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused everyone who is dealing with this outage. I can assure you the outage wasn't intentional by my company at all. There was an accident that cut one of our main fiber cables that goes to our head end and our field techs are working around the clock on getting it replaced and fixed. The repair for this could go late into the night to be honest. So please be patient.
9
I'm with @6, there are a lot of reasons to hate Comcast, but outages happen. Now if you want to bitch about Comcast's response to the outage that's another story...(My personal favorite is always the "you should check our website for outage information"...I'd love to, but my internet IS OUT (I live in an area without cell service, so smartphone isn't an option)).
10
Guys, the "internet" is designed to be a network with a lot of fall-back tolerance. That's how "routing" works around problems on the internet. To be honest, it's Comcast cheaping out and not building any redundancy in their nodes in the area that's got your connection borked by this.
11
Agree with @9. My Comcast service has been super reliable (far more reliable than my electricity) and outages are rare. They are horrible to deal with when problems arise and I hate that it's the only option in my neighborhood.
12
I get the outrage about the outage. I really do.

But I'm guessing that non-corporate-overlord internet companies have outages too.
13
Sloggers, the "internet" is designed to be a network with a lot of fall-back tolerance. That's how "routing" works around problems on the internet.

To be honest, it's Comcast cheaping out and not building any redundancy in their nodes in the area that's got your connection borked by this. Kind of surprising for some of the most expensive internet services of 1st world countries, I know.
14
@chefjoe

Comcast's network is not the internet. That being said, if you cut a backbone cable on any network (including the internet) things are going to go bad. Try cutting one of the transatlantic fiber cables sometime and then try to access websites in Europe.
15
Dang, I'm two blocks west of Broadway, but we run our T-1 through CenturyLink - no afternoon off for me!
16
People need to "wrap their minds around" that this shit is shared. Even IF Seattle pulled this off it would still travel down the same line and if the line was to get cut so would everything else. And then muni-broadband would be switched to the next wire center down the line and so on. This is totally NOT an example of how municipal broadband would fix things.
17
@3) And the same goes for H2O, electric, roads, schools and disaster relief - AMIRIGHT?!!
18
@7: That was my HTML bad. Their website is working fine.

@6, 9, 12: https://twitter.com/Ansel/status/5862213…
19
@11 - your Comcast is more reliable than your electricity? BS!
20
As an employee of an evil Socialist Electric utility, let me assure you that stuff like this happens at both public and private utilities all the time. All it takes is somebody to run their car into a pole, or dig up a line, or for lightning to strike.They could maybe be more redundant (power companies can usually switch around problems) but accidents do happen.
21
This same issue would occur if it wasn't comcast. except it would be handled with the speed and accuracy of a government agency. oh wait, that's an ocymoron.
22
@21) You seem to be the ocymoron.
23
I am enjoying the irony of businesses bitching about closing today because Comcast doesn't have redundancy. Uh... why doesn't your business have redundant ISPs?
24
It isn't the outage that's bad. It's the fact that most people have no other options.

And raindrop, you've got to be pretty fucking thick to think Comcast is a creature of the free market.
25
Our connection becomes rather sketchy and slow whenever it rains. In Seattle.
26
No one seems to know how to spell oxymoron.
27
There seem to be shills from Comcast here. Look, it''s not unreasonable for Seattle customers to have expected Comcast to have built out their fiber to survive a single cut. They even could do it in a way that the service slows with a cut, which would require less extra fiber build-out, until the cut is repaired. Going down completely because of a fiber cut isn't great, and people are right to complain.

Comcast had 41% margins on their cable business last quarter and $2B in net profit, which they're using to boost dividends and share buybacks rather than investing in their network. They could have invested some of their profits to add redundancy that might prevent outages from single points of failure like these. They didn't. In fact, Comcast can charge these amounts, get these profit margins, and provide this low level of service quality because people have few other options. It's perfectly reasonable for people to be upset and want more options and competition for broadband in Seattle.
28
@14 arbeck
You are correct that Comcast Seattle isn't the internet. But they are connected to the internet and act as a backbone provider in most areas that they "serve". Since the basic specs of the internet requires redundancy it would not be that difficult for them to build some redundancy into their system. BTW the basic specs of the internet were designed around communication after a freaking nuclear war. That is why it is a packet switched network that is semi self-healing with regards to outages in the backbones. If it can survive a bunch of holes where cities used to be it should survive a single cut cable unless that cable is a last mile one and that only knocks a few places off the net. (local equivalent to a nuke) From what I am seeing that is NOT the case here. That is not a last mile cable and therefor there should be redundant ways for the data to get thru. Since there isn't, it is purely a case of corporate greed requiring engineering to cut corners.

And just so you know. Cutting a transatlantic cable would do nothing more than slow down communications with Europe. There are multiple cables across that ocean so that while traffic would slow (maybe) it would not stop. Besides some of the traffic would be routed in ways that probably are not that obvious to you. Like via Australia. DARPA designed the system that way and it works quite well. It is only when someone (Comcast) cuts corners that problems arise.
29
Service is back up at my apartment. We live in the South end of Capitol Hill.
30
thank Mayor Comcast. also, most of the internet is fiber at some point, regardless of how it gets into your home. The fact that one line going takes out an entire neighborhood (no redundancy in the major nodes) speaks volumes about what Comcast does with their money.
31
I've been happily using Clear Wimax for 8 years.

It works well.

But that of course, is the reason they are doing away with it.
32
I think Comcast is a swell company. They always treat their customers extremely well and they never charge too much money for their mostly reliable service.

(Dear Comcast PR Folks. Do you have a number I can call so I can collect my check?"_
33
Hey! You know what I would've liked, Comcast? Not spending three hours trying to fix my internet today ON THE PHONE WITH YOU. Why didn't you just tell me about the f'ing outage?!
34
Quest changed its name to Century Link thinking we would forget who they really are. It's like criminals that change their name so they can't be found. And Comcast is the most hated company in the United States. Why we allow these serial criminal organizations to continue to screw us is beyond me.

People confuse democracy with capitalism. Democracy is a great concept, but even the framers of the constitution knew that unbridled capitalism was dangerous, thus the commerce clause. Congress has the right and duty to regulate commerce. But instead democracy sold itself to capitalism outright, giving us the modern corporation, with no legal liability for those who run corporations, lobbying of congress, outright purchase of politicians, and gag orders and sealed court settlements to hide their serial criminal behavior.

We wouldn't let rapists, thieves and murderers run lose like this, and yet Comcast and other corporations continually screw us and we give them hero status as "job creators". I hate Comcast with a passion. And Quest. Screw them both.
35
The comments in here about "the internet" being "redundant" are hilarious. Do you run two WiFi networks in your house so that if one goes down you have the other? Dual power sources? Dual links from the building to the street? Are all your cables run in different directions and conduits so a single event doesn't break multiple wires?

If you consider the connection from the street to your building to be "the internet" and you want to bitch about a service outage, then you've done all of this yourself before you knock your provider for not doing it somewhere upstream.

Redundancy is possible with IP connections. It is not required by some mythical spec for "the internet". If you want redundancy, pay for it. Uptime costs cubic dollars.

I'm not a Comcast shill, just an engineer that actually understands how networks work, but I'm sure nobody believes me.
36
brokenboy, you are a shill. The reason is as follows: if Comcast was not a monopoly and there was actually a competitive market of ISP's, then there might be say ten different last mile providers, and Comcast's outage would have only affected say 1/10 of the people it affected this time. That is called redundancy in the internet. It doesn't guarantee every user has a backup, but it guarantees there is sufficient redundancy system-wide. brokenboy, you clearly do not understand how a robust network should work.
37
please sign
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/please-…
38
@35 Hate doing this so long after but...

If you are an engineer then either someone else says what to do or you really suck at reading design pages. I specifically exempted individual connections with my last mile comment. The DARPA specifications for the net do indeed require redundancy. That is why it is a packet switched network. And I never said a word about redundancy at the end-user level.

Oh and the end user IS an IP connection. You might want to look into how the internet is supposed to work before you talk about subjects outside your knowledge base. A properly designed network would lose, at most, a couple of blocks from a cut cable. Not a large chunk of the city. And before trying to school someone about the internet you might want to find out if they might know a little about it first. I did my time reading and commenting of RFC's and voting on CFV's and can say that I knew about some of the specs on it before most people online even knew there was an internet.

Been there, done that, voted no on the T-shirt.

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