Internet Outage – Gee, thanks ACS!

Well, “stuff” happens. I have been very pleased over the years with my ACS DSL service. I use this to connect this server to the world. It’s not the fastest but has been, for the most part, very reliable. But nothing is perfect.

Tonight, beginning somewhere between 17:52 and 17:57 there was a total Internet blackout. I thought it must be me, but other than resetting the DSL modem didn’t do much until I checked a bit further.

I then noticed that I had no Internet connectivity on my cell, nor on the Franklin Wireless CDU-680 CDMA modem. I looked at the iPhone, and also my 10Mbps 12Mbps cable modem.  Connectivity was fine on each. Looking at the network status on the ACS website, I saw no planned or unscheduled outages. The network was apparently fine, except it was not.

So I called the number and got a recorded message. You can listen to the ACS Internet outage notice here.

Apparently there was a “server failure” in Seattle, effectively preventing all traffic to and from ACS customers to flow. I assume it was a core gateway router, but that is just a guess.

In any event, it looks like TheCzechs.net, as well as the other ACS Internet pathways are back as of 18:50.  Essentially the outage lasted an hour…

UPDATE: While writing this entry, I checked the links in the message.  When I followed the link to GCI, I saw to my surprise, that the max download speed on my 10Mbps cable modem service is now 12Mbps!  I don’t know when this change occurred.  Sure, folks in the L48 get easily two or sometimes more throughput than that, but this is a big deal for Alaska.  Thanks, GCI.

(And now for the disclaimer…  I work in GCI’s Industrial Telecom Group, as a Sr. PM for projects serving the oil and gas industry.)