Northeast hit with reports of major internet outage
U.S internet users across the Northeast on Tuesday reported widespread outages. People posting on Twitter said they were having issues connecting with various online services from Washington, D.C., to Boston, a broad and densely populated swath that includes key U.S. government services and major financial companies such as Fidelity Investments.
The outage is said to be affecting major internet and cloud providers as well as services such as Google, Facebook and Slack.
Verizon reported a fiber cut in Brooklyn, New York, via Twitter, although it's not clear if that issue is responsible for the entire outage. The internet service provider didn't have any estimate of when the problem spot would be fixed.
Reports of problems with Verizon's service spiked after 11 a.m. Eastern time, according to Downdetector.com, which tracks internet disruptions. The site also found reports of problems at Amazon Web Services, Google, YouTube and Zoom.
Neither Verizon nor Comcast, another major internet service provider, immediately responded to requests for comment by the Associated Press.
Amazon investigating
Amazon, whose web services division powers a wide ranges of online services, indicated its network isn't the cause of the problem.
"We are investigating connectivity issues with an internet provider, mainly affecting the East Coast of the United States, outside of the [Amazon Web Services] Network," the company wrote in a Tuesday morning post. "We are investigating the issue with the external provider."
Google said it also had not found issues with its own services and was investigating.
The East Coast outages began at 11:25 a.m. local time and recovery began at 12:37 p.m, according to Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentic, a network-monitoring company. He reported a 12% drop in traffic volume to Verizon.
Madory said he did not yet know if other carriers were impacted.
Disruptions to internet services are always a hassle, but have become even more excruciating as the pandemic forces millions of people to work from home and students to attend school remotely.
"Widespread internet outages in the area impacting remote learning today," lamented the Twitter account for Galvin Middle School in Wakefield, Massachusetts. "Stay patient and do best you can. It's out of our control. Hopefully things will be resolved soon!"
