Internet outage at Expo Icrontic
primesuspect
Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
Got a letter from Wide Open West today about Saturday's internet outage. I thought it was pretty awesome. This kind of response is exactly why I love WoW:
Dear Customers,
If you were home on the evening of Thursday, June 21st or Saturday, June 23rd you most likely experienced problems with your WOW! service. First and foremost, I want to apologize for the interruption and any inconvenience we caused you or your family. I was also impacted at my home and fully appreciate your difficulty in communicating with your world. Although this type of occurrence is rare, we take them very personally and therefore do everything possible to prevent them in the first place. We are also not perfect and as a valued customer you deserve to know what happened.
The cause of the outage is a very complicated issue and one that IT professionals could appreciate but most of us don’t understand. I will try to make it simple. New equipment was recently installed on our main fiber optic network that supports all of metro Detroit to support the growing data traffic that flows from businesses. The new equipment sent unexpected and unnecessary data onto the network and overloaded the processing capacity. The only analogy I can draw for you is what happens with rush hour traffic right here in the Motor City. Hundreds of thousands of cars flood the freeway in a short period of time and causes traffic to crawl. Eventually there is an accident as cars attempt to jockey for a better position and traffic stops. In our case, data represents the cars and our fiber network is the freeway. The data traffic was unexpected and the new equipment was tested and used in other parts of our company for several years. So unlike rush hour, the impact was not predictable. During this time, if you attempted to call us I don’t have to tell you it was difficult if not impossible to reach us.
Our team jumped into action and began working with equipment vendors to solve the problem. Our internal team implemented a filtering solution that prevents any unnecessary data from passing onto our fiber freeway. As of Sunday, the issue is solved and data continues to flow properly throughout our network. Our Network Operations Center monitors our network 24 hours a day, seven days a week and we are committed to offering you a service that lives up to our name.
Again, thank you for your business. I hope you have a wonderful 4th of July week.
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Comments
Randomly speed test them at: http://speedtest.comcast.net and keep track of the results. In my case, I found that if I got slow results on one server testing, invariably I got much better results on another server. When that was not so, I called and complained if I could give them averages that were only 80% of rated speed.
I think after a while they started LOGGING my (and other folks') speedtests (I have a fixed IP and they can trace to the local node by IP subrange) themselves, because I never saw slow service tests after a while. Even while Tropical Storm Debby was making landfall and Punta Gorda streets were flooded and the wind gusted to 35-40 mph, I (in Punta Gorda, FL) got rated speed of service.
In Punta Gorda, they are guaranteeing speed of internet service now, as folks went to Century Link DSL en-masse when they did not. Punta Gorda is a tiny market for Comcast, the nearest local node is 15 miles away in Port Charlotte.
Mark me down as a once cursing-at-Comcast customer who almost went to DSL who is now happy with their service.
Unfortunately, there are far too many companies like that out there.