Widespread Comcast outage, and how to route around it
A status report for the Comcast domain name servers shows the Chicago and Detroit servers down on Sunday evening.
Courtesy Steve Tanner
This is not the first Comcast outage related to name server issues, reports Engadget, which points to an earlier set of name server outages on the East Coast that affected network users in late November. Similar issues occured in 2005, reported CNET at the time.
If this problem affects you, and somehow you are still able to read this, you can work around the issue by pointing your computer's name servers at alternate hosts. The instructions for Google Public DNS describe how to reconfigure your computer to look up names using the Google servers. If you are affiliated with the University of Michigan, the U of M DNS servers can be used. Other alternatives include OpenDNS, which welcomed a set of new users during the November Comcast outage.
Computerworld's Preston Gralla put together detailed notes on how to work around the Comcast Internet blackout, with screen shots of configuration information for a Linksys router and for Windows Vista.
Edward Vielmetti routes around damage for AnnArbor.com.
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