Internet outages jump 28% in 2nd week of October

This weekly feature from S&P Global Market Intelligence, in collaboration with internet-service monitoring company ThousandEyes, aims to give remote workers insights into internet service disruptions.

Global internet outages in the week of Oct. 9 rose 28% to 443, compared to 345 in the prior week, according to data from ThousandEyes, a network-monitoring service owned by Cisco Systems Inc.

This is the third instance in 2021 and the latest since mid-June that the volume of weekly global disruptions exceeded the 400 mark.

Meanwhile, U.S. outages increased 32% to 221 from 168 in the preceding week. The U.S. total comprised 50% of the total global outages for the Oct. 9 week, compared to 49% in the prior week.

ThousandEyes observed two notable outages in the just-concluded week.

Microsoft Corp. on Oct. 11 dealt with a network outage that affected some downstream partners as well as access to services based on Microsoft environments. The disruption, likely a maintenance exercise, appeared to center on nodes in Amsterdam and Frankfurt. The outage ran for 34 minutes and was cleared at around 5:40 p.m. ET.

On Oct. 13, Tysons, Va.-based internet service provider GTT Communications Inc. experienced an interruption that impacted some partners and customers in the U.S. and five other countries. The outage, which apparently centered on nodes in London and San Jose, Calif., lasted around 44 minutes and was cleared at around 11:55 p.m. ET.

ThousandEyes also detected two collaboration-app outages in the Oct. 9 week, down 67% up from six disruptions in the prior week. One of the disruptions happened in the U.S.

Business-hours disruptions globally dipped 5 percentage points to 37% in the previous week, with the same metric in the U.S. decreasing 10 percentage points to 30%. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, business-hours outages rose 14 percentage points to 61%, while such outages in the Asia-Pacific region fell 7 percentage points to 34%.