Dive Brief:
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Another significant internet outage struck the U.S. and UK on Wednesday, according to multiple reports. The latest outage affected Tier 1 network service provider Level 3 Communications.
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Level 3 officials said the outage was believed to be "a configuration error." A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack appears to have been ruled out.
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Level 3’s networks were restored to normal operation by noon Eastern Time. The outage affected voice and internet services for some Lever 3 customers, but did not appear to affect Level 3’s larger customers like Netflix or HBO Go.
Dive Insight:
Hopefully, regular internet outages don’t become the norm, but the recent frequency of incidents highlights the vulnerability of major networks.
"Our technical team is looking into this issue to determine the cause," wrote Nikki Wheeler, Level 3’s senior director of communications, in a statement sent to media. "Our priority is to ensure the reliability of our network and services. We will provide updates as more information becomes available."
On Monday, CenturyLink announced plans to acquire Level 3 Communications in a deal that creates the second largest domestic communications provider.
The latest internet meltdown comes less than two weeks after DNS provider Dyn suffered a major DDoS attack that disrupted service for many users trying to reach Twitter, Etsy, Github, Spotify, Reddit, Netflix and SoundCloud, among others.
