Note: Comcast service is finally back to normal as of late today.
If you are like me, and are unfortuante enough to be a Comcast broadband internet customer, you are probably experiencing the same hell I’ve been through for the past day. The problem? Comcast’s high speed internet service is totally up and running, but without a single DNS server for the whole friggin’ network. Apparently even under normal circusmtances, Comcast normally maintains only one DNS server for all 21.5 million subscribers on its network. And whoops! It happened to break down last night. For those who are unaware, without DNS, you effectively have all the bandwidth you want, but no way to go anywhere with it.
For those of you in the same boat who might be reading this at work or through an alternate ISP, there is a workaround here.
Update: DNS still down as of 9:00 am EDT here today. Oh and by the way, for those of you were able to restore connectivity using the above fix, whatever you do, don’t reset your connection, or try to change back to Comcast’s DNS servers just yet. Comcast decided that in order to “fix” the DNS problem, they also needed to shut down their DHCP servers in some areas, so if you do anything that requires releasing/renewing your IP address, your connection will likely go down for good, until the morons at Comcast finish mucking up whatever they felt like mucking up today. I learned this the hard way this morning, and I’m still waiting to get any signs of life from my cable modem.
Times like this, I’m thankful for n00b neighbors who chose DSL over cable, AND who are too dumb to secure their wireless access point. 🙂