Wonky Internet service

Networking
1

I had some odd behavior with my internet service this morning from about 6-10 am. I’m not sure what to make of it. I could get on to Netflix and Google, but most sites weren’t responding, Amazon and Newegg for example. I tried to ping them and I could get results from Google and Netflix but the others timed out. I tried resetting my DSL modem to no effect. Its CenturyLink service if that matters. Any ideas on what could have been the cause?

Edit 1: I got a hold of a neighbor, via a local community app called NextDoor, who was having internet issues too but didn’t go into specifics

Mods please move this thread if its not in the best spot.

2

Century link is having major outage issues today all over. It’s a problem with their network around the US and abroad.

1 Like
3

I’m not surprised given the service I get from them.

I just thought it was really odd how some things would work and other wouldn’t. I could stream Netflix but couldn’t shop on Amazon.

4

It is Odd but that is how DNS works, some domains will respond to web traffic and ping requests while others will not.

Using a Public DNS server like that from Google or Cloudflare can sometimes help but NOT always.

It sometimes comes down to luck of the draw or the ISP network in general.

5

Thanks for the explanation. I didn’t know that it could behave that way.

6

I had the exact same issue with BULGARTEL in Bulgaria. Interesting…
Resets or switching from Quad9 to Google DNS didn’t help until everything got back to normal this evening.

7

Some ISP’s have caches for Netflix at certain PoP’s in their network, for efficiency. Perhaps there was an issue/outage on the ISP’s network, but you were able to route to the cache?

8

EVERYBODY had internet issues this morning. I got an early morning wake-up call due to outage alerts from work, and tracked it down to CenturyLink/Level-3, which had a major outage:

Search downdetector for any major websites, including ones that worked for you, and you’ll see a spike of reports from people who couldn’t get to them while CL/L3 was out. Being one of the top transit providers, their issues caused large swaths of the internet to become unreachable. Which sites you could/couldn’t access is very random. Many people reported Google, Cloudflare, Netflix, etc. were down, and Cloudflare having an outage affected a large number of sites who use their service.

9

Yeah, downdetector was down for me…