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Time Warner Cable Internet outage fixed

December 11th, 2008, 10:02 am · 29 Comments · posted by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress

**Update, 12/22/08**: I’m still getting reports from readers of Time Warner Cable Internet outages, so I’ve decided to offer a weekly update until the issue is fixed. Read the latest at “The weekly Time Warner Cable status report.”

**UPDATE, Dec. 16, 2008** Because I’ve continued to receive complaints that Time Warner’s Internet is not fixed, I checked in with the company again at “Is Time Warner Cable’s Internet really fixed?“**

Time Warner Cable

If you were one of the thousands who experienced an Internet outage late Monday night, and then Tuesday morning and even possibly today, that issue has been fixed, according to Time Warner Cable spokesman Darryl Ryan.

The outage affected Internet users, and not cable and phone users as some media reported. And the number of affected subscribers was overblown, Ryan said. 

“It was no where close to that 1 million number. If I were to estimate it, it was more in the low thousands,” he said.

However, he agreed that if Time Warner’s million-plus Internet users in the area were online at the time, they could have been affected by the outage.

The outage, which started Monday around 10 p.m., lasted a few hours for many. Those who noticed it were viewing Web sites. Another outage started around 3 a.m. Tuesday. But those customers who experienced the worst of it did something you’d think might fix the problem: they rebooted their cable modem.

The problem was with the Domain Name System servers (DNS servers), which lets us type in Web sites as easy-to-remember words (like ocregister.com) as opposed to numbers (69.25.233.228). The DNS resolves numbers into letters.  Without these translations functioning, web browsers are unable to locate their destinations. 

“From preliminary findings, we had a component failure. One of our networks went down. So, people were not able to connect to DNS,” Ryan said. 

But for people (like me) who didn’t know at the time it was a DNS issue, we rebooted. Internet service was out for hours. If we had known, we could have immediately switched to an alternative DNS resolver service, such as OpenDNS.com.

Download speeds were still sluggish for me Wednesday and today — I’m getting less than half the speed I was last week. Ryan says that has nothing to do with the recent outage. 

Time Warner’s status site today still says there are outages in the L.A./O.C. region: 

There could still be residual issues, so if you have problems with your Time Warner service, call in and let them know about it. The phone number is 1-888-TW-CABLE.

Related stories:

 

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MORE HOT TV TOPICS: * Time Warner Cable * Cox Cable * Verizon FiOS * AT&T U-verse * DirecTV * Dish Network * Web TV * All TV
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 29 Comments

  • Jeff says:
    December 17, 2008 at 5:52 pm

    Finally gave up! Still couldn’t get on the Internet. I had AOL cancel the AOL/Time-Warner bundle we had and create a separate AOL account. Called TWC and had them change our Broadband to allow direct Internet access, i.e. without using AOL. Works great………so far. I went for the mid-range cost package and seems to be faster than the AOL/TWC bundle package we had before. One thing for sure, tis much faster than dial-up. Best of luck to all still having problems.

    P.S. The separate AOL and TWC bill is now less than the original bundle package……

  • Pete says:
    December 22, 2008 at 7:43 pm

    Does this means the on-going outage only affects AOL/TWC bundle customers?

  • Lyn says:
    January 6, 2009 at 3:39 pm

    My broadband has been down for almost a week. AOL and TWC pointing fingers at each other. Several calls to each and it’s a different story each time. TWC sent a tech out on Sunday and he rewired, boosted the signal and swapped out the modem. He confirmed all is okay on our end, but we still can’t get broadband to work. I called TWC last night and insisted on talking to a supervisor. I waited for over an hour for a supervisor to come on the line; CSR finally came on and said she would have supervisor return call (I’m still waiting). I’m not anxious to switch to DSL. Anybody have any experience with satellite?

  • A V Rabinowitz says:
    January 6, 2009 at 9:47 pm

    Lynn,

    We dropped Time Warner internet in 2007 because of many of the same problems you have described, we were having time and time again shortly after our area (Brea) was converted from Adelphia’s network over to Time Warner. Lot’s of finger pointing. We gave Time Warner the finger for their horrible internet service.

    In 2007, we switched to AT&T’s DSL service. Earlier this year when we dropped our AT&T local phone service, we switched to AT&T’s “naked” DSL (DSL without local phone service).

    So far, we have not experienced any outages to speak of, but from tips we have learned from the Gadgetress (and others) we do use Open DNS. AT&T did experience an outage earlier this year with the DNS servers, but ours was running fine. I’m assuming it was because of Open DNS.

    I know switiching providers is a hassle and we are not a young couple. But, we sure have learned a lot from these boards. We came across some great suggestions on how to dump those providers who proivide poor and inconsistent service, and look for ways to reduce your overall communications bill(s) with services from different providers (I realize each person has different service requirements and programming needs).

    Not only have we un-bundled, but we are SAVING money by un-bundling and fighting back by purchasing services that meet our needs to fight these over the top price increases! No big deal to go on-line and pay an extra bill or two from an additional provider. Bill pay from our credit union is free.

    2009…The Year of Un-Bundling!!!

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