Once again, large swaths of the Internet in the United States were affected by a major morning network outage today. This time, it was the Tier 1 network service provider Level 3 Communications that was at the center of the problem, which disrupted parts of the Internet’s backbone. But for the moment, it does not appear that the outage was triggered by a denial of service attack or other network attack, like the attack on DNS provider Dyn on October 21.

In a statement sent to the media, Nikki Wheeler, Level 3’s senior director of communications, wrote, "Our technical team is looking into this issue to determine the cause. Our priority is to ensure the reliability of our network and services. We will provide updates as more information becomes available.” A Level 3 spokesperson confirmed that the company’s networks had been restored to normal function by 1600 Greenwich Mean Time (noon US Eastern Time) but said that no other information was available yet.

The outage had no major impact on major streaming services that use Level 3, including Netflix and the HBO Go mobile application. But it did affect some customers’ voice and Internet services. Level 3 suffered another brief outage a month ago, caused by a human error.

Level 3 is in the midst of a proposed acquisition by CenturyLink—a $25 billion cash deal still awaiting approval from the FCC.

Ars will update this report as more information becomes available.

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