Level3 Service Disruption Causes Nationwide Internet Outages

A service disruption on Level3's networks Monday caused internet outages across the country that Level3 says was caused by a "configuration error." Comcast was among the internet providers affected by the outage.

Down Detector, the website that tracks outage reports that are self-reported by users, showed a large spike in Comcast outages around 1 p.m. eastern time. Around the same time, there was also a massive spike in Level3 outages.

TechCrunch explains that if Level3 is having issues, it will ripple out to many other ISPs. Level3, which recently merged with CenturyLink, operates a Tier 1 networking, which forms the backbone of the internet.

"On Monday, Nov. 6, our network experienced a service disruption affecting some customers with IP-based services," Level3 said in a statement. "The disruption was caused by a configuration error. We know how important these services are to our customers. Our technicians were able to restore service within approximately 90 minutes."

Comcast acknowledged the issue, saying its teams are monitoring "an external network issue."

"We apologize & appreciate your patience while we work to fix," Comcast wrote on Twitter. The company also said that the issue is affecting customers nationwide. As on Monday evening, Comcast said the issues should be resolved for almost all customers.

Last year, a series of attacks on the DNS provider Dyn caused major websites like Twitter, Spotify and Paypal to go down.

Patch will update this report.

Image via Shutterstock