DNS crash put Comcast Internet out across East Coast for several hours

DNS crash put Comcast Internet out across East Coast for several hours

QUINCY — Internet outages were reported by Comcast customers across Massachusetts and elsewhere as the communications giant’s DNS servers appeared to have crashed Sunday night.

The problem was corrected by Monday, but many people still had problems or needed to power cycle their modems.

To prevent the problem from happening again, change your network adapter’s DNS settings to a public DNS server, like Google’s 8.8.8.8 server. Instructions can be found here.

While service was not technically “down,” countless thousands of customers did not have Internet access, as changing your DNS server settings is not a common computer task among home users.

The internet service was “down” on the North Shore and South with other reports as far as New Haven and Western Connecticut. Reports then came in from Washington, Baltimore, New York State and across Northern New England.

Television service was not affected.

In Quincy, where Blast is headquartered, DNS service was down, but high-definition TV is working. Changing to the Google DNS service solved the problem.

This article was initially written via an iPhone with AT&T 3G service.