GNG News Guy
12-04-2007, 11:00 AM
http://i.dslr.net/urls/71/4471.gif (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Responds-To-Outage-89943)
Last night we reported (http://www.thegng.org/shownews/Major-ATT-DNS-Outage-89928) that AT&T was suffering a significant outage in BellSouth territory. Our resident users reported that DNS functionality was derailed, and AT&T support mechanisms all but failed -- with users unable to reach support representatives. The Associated Press (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5guSEQBOeibrt6c9KjbES2zonTQtwD8TAE8UG0) ultimately picked up on your complaints. We asked AT&T's Brad Mays what caused the outage and received this official company statement:On Monday evening, AT&T experienced a disruption in its Internet service in the nine-state Southeast region which impacted customers' ability to surf the Web. The root cause of the disruption is still being investigated but appears to be an equipment impairment. Network technicians were able to restore service slightly before 11 p.m. We continue to monitor the situation, but it this point it appears that service has been successfully restored. We apologize for any inconvenience this is causing customers.
Just as when Comcast DNS servers ran into trouble in 2005 and last June, customers have found that alternative DNS operators such as OpenDNS (http://www.opendns.com/) are frequently helpful during such outages. We're sure OpenDNS doesn't mind the added business, either. OpenDNS's John Roberts even stopped by our forums (http://www.thegng.org/forum/r19559001-) to lend users a hand.Ironically, we even took our Washington DC location offline for maintenance during this period (not knowing about these ISP DNS issues), and -- as designed -- there was zero interruption of service. Traffic was re-routed to our other locations seamlessly. Check our system page (here (http://system.opendns.com/) or here (http://208.67.219.60/)) in case your DNS is ever down.
Of course your ISP would probably prefer you switch back to their DNS servers once the smoke clears, given the growing use of DNS redirection (http://www.thegng.org/shownews/89282) to create an additional revenue stream (though to our knowledge neither AT&T or Comcast use DNS redirection yet).
read comment(s) (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Responds-To-Outage-89943)
Last night we reported (http://www.thegng.org/shownews/Major-ATT-DNS-Outage-89928) that AT&T was suffering a significant outage in BellSouth territory. Our resident users reported that DNS functionality was derailed, and AT&T support mechanisms all but failed -- with users unable to reach support representatives. The Associated Press (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5guSEQBOeibrt6c9KjbES2zonTQtwD8TAE8UG0) ultimately picked up on your complaints. We asked AT&T's Brad Mays what caused the outage and received this official company statement:On Monday evening, AT&T experienced a disruption in its Internet service in the nine-state Southeast region which impacted customers' ability to surf the Web. The root cause of the disruption is still being investigated but appears to be an equipment impairment. Network technicians were able to restore service slightly before 11 p.m. We continue to monitor the situation, but it this point it appears that service has been successfully restored. We apologize for any inconvenience this is causing customers.
Just as when Comcast DNS servers ran into trouble in 2005 and last June, customers have found that alternative DNS operators such as OpenDNS (http://www.opendns.com/) are frequently helpful during such outages. We're sure OpenDNS doesn't mind the added business, either. OpenDNS's John Roberts even stopped by our forums (http://www.thegng.org/forum/r19559001-) to lend users a hand.Ironically, we even took our Washington DC location offline for maintenance during this period (not knowing about these ISP DNS issues), and -- as designed -- there was zero interruption of service. Traffic was re-routed to our other locations seamlessly. Check our system page (here (http://system.opendns.com/) or here (http://208.67.219.60/)) in case your DNS is ever down.
Of course your ISP would probably prefer you switch back to their DNS servers once the smoke clears, given the growing use of DNS redirection (http://www.thegng.org/shownews/89282) to create an additional revenue stream (though to our knowledge neither AT&T or Comcast use DNS redirection yet).
read comment(s) (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Responds-To-Outage-89943)