Global internet outages jump 11% in early November

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 increased 11% to 380 for the week of Nov. 6, ending three consecutive weeks of decreases that began in mid-October, according to data from ThousandEyes, a network-monitoring service owned by Cisco Systems Inc.

U.S. outages increased 3% to 179. The U.S. total comprised 47% of all global interruptions observed last week, down from 51% in the prior week.

ThousandEyes detected three notable outages during the week of Nov. 6, including two network disruptions at Comcast Cable Communications LLC on Nov. 9 that impacted customers and downstream partners across the U.S. The first outage, which lasted for more than an hour and apparently centered on nodes in Sunnyvale, Calif., primarily affected customers on the West Coast. The interruption cleared at about 1:35 a.m. ET.

The second outage intermittently affected Comcast Communications' network routes in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Ashburn, Va., and other areas along the U.S. East and Central regions. The interruption, which also ran for over an hour, was cleared at about 9:20 a.m. ET.

Two days later, on Nov. 11, NTT Global-owned internet services provider NTT America Inc. dealt with a disruption that impacted some downstream partners and customers across the U.S., Brazil, Canada, China and Japan. The outage, which ran for 19 minutes and centered on nodes in Osaka, Japan, and San Jose, Calif., was cleared at about 1:20 p.m. ET.

ThousandEyes also detected 11 collaboration-app disruptions during the past week, down from 12 the week prior. Ten of these outages took place in the U.S.

Global business-hours outages fell 5 percentage points to 35% of total global outages. In the U.S., the metric fell 6 percentage points to 33%, while in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, business-hours disruptions were down 3 percentage points to 37%. Business-hours outages had the biggest week-over-week drop in the Asia-Pacific region, falling 10 percentage points to 47% of the region's total disruptions.