# Inter-nots

Comcast experienced a city-wide outage this morning—affecting probably hundreds of thousands of people. Outages like this can be confusing to the tech-savvy and regular users alike, so I thought it'd be useful to share how I came to understand the problem so that I might help others.

## Something's up (or down?)

I first started seeing issues this morning while I was making coffee breakfast. I tried to start WBEZ on our kitchen Sonos, but my station wasn't playing. Troubleshooting started as most early-morning fixes do... I just mashed the play button a bunch of times thinking it might work.

![Screenshot of a search in the Sonos app for 'WBEZ' with a list of results](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1636472412188/4BLFzthIh.jpeg)

It didn't. If one feed didn't work, maybe another would? I searched and the Sonos app listed a number of sources, so I tried another, and another. Finally, one worked... and then cut out again a minute later. Maybe a different station? Nope.

So... it looked like the speaker and my phone were fine, but something was going on upstream.

## Expanding the search

Many folks' assumption, in this case, is "it's just me"—whether that means "my phone," "my house," or something else. Troubleshooting often makes sense going smallest to largest. 

I next checked my home internet... I'm a little old-school and still using Apple AirPort Extremes for my home network. I opened the AirPort Utility app and it showed a big orange dot next to "Internet" but green on my access points. Cool, my internal network is ok but the world is not. 

![The Wi-Fi switch in Control Center on iOS](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1636472607778/BnjH0L7zd.jpeg)

Next up is the connection between my house and the world—my modem. Whether you have an Xfinity-provided modem or bring your own (like I do), their app (if you can reach it) will tell you if there's a detectable issue with your modem. Since we recently switched to T-Mobile from Verizon and now actually have a cell signal in our home, I flipped my Wi-Fi off and pulled up the Xfinity app.

![A screenshot of the Xfinity mobile app showing 'Internet outage detected' and a list of devices.](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1636472639098/VHWQl91Qy4.jpeg)

The app showed me two things:

1. There's no connection between my modem and the internet.
2. (More importantly) There's a big problem.

Without #2 I could have tried unplugging and replugging the modem, but since there was a wider outage there was no need.

## Rounding out the picture

Xfinity reported an outage, and I was able to get bits and pieces of information from their site as it came and went. A quick Twitter search for "Xfinity Chicago" reported many others with similar issues within the past 30 minutes—a sure sign that "it's not just me". I also corroborated on [DownDetector](https://downdetector.com/status/xfinity/map/) which shows a map of user-reported outages.

With the issue confirmed, I emailed my neighbors from my phone with news of the outage and a link for them to track the status of the issue. Shortly after, [Block Club Chicago reported similarly](https://blockclubchicago.org/2021/11/09/comcast-internet-down-across-chicago/?mc_cid=4eaebae72c&mc_eid=31a13679cb).

After all that, I put my devices down and... went outside.

## To recap

Understanding the incredibly complex systems that keep us all connected these days is impossible, even for the most tech-savvy of us. In any complex system, here are a few things I try to remember when working through an issue:

- start small, then widen your view.
- don't bang your head on one specific issue when you haven't ruled out others.
- know where to go for help.
- when you've come to a solution, share it broadly.

One quick email, or even a tweet, can help countless others by saving time, reducing facepalms, and helping us get back to our lives.