Global internet outages increase 35% in mid-September

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 totaled 297 in the week of Sept. 11, up 35% from 220 in the previous week, according to data from ThousandEyes, a network-monitoring service owned by Cisco Systems Inc.

This increase ends the two-week downward trend in the volume of internet outages globally, which began with the week of Aug. 28.

U.S. outages also increased 43% week over week, to 123 from 86 in the prior week. The U.S. total comprised 41% of the total global outages for the Sept. 11 week, compared to 39% in the prior week.

ThousandEyes observed two notable outages in the previous week.

Microsoft Corp. on Sept. 13 dealt with a disruption that impacted some downstream partners and access to services running on Microsoft environments. The outage, which apparently centered on nodes in the U.S. cities of Chicago, Cleveland, and Des Moines, Iowa, lasted about 29 minutes. The interruption was cleared at about 1:55 a.m. ET that day. The duration and timing relative to the location of the nodes at the center of the outage suggest that it was likely a maintenance exercise.

A day later, on Sept. 14, Boulder, Colo.-based Tier 1 carrier Zayo Group LLC dealt with an outage that impacted some customers and partners in multiple locations, including the U.S., the U.K., Hong Kong and Switzerland. The outage, which appeared to center on nodes in Philadelphia, lasted about 15 minutes and was cleared at about 3:20 p.m. ET.

ThousandEyes also detected three collaboration-app disruptions in the Sept. 11 week, up by two from prior-week figures. Two of these disruptions occurred in the U.S.

Business-hours outages at the global level remained at 35% for the third straight week, while the same metric in the U.S. decreased 5 percentage points to 33%. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, business-hours disruptions increased 9 percentage points to 33%, while such outages in the Asia-Pacific region decreased 3 percentage points to 36%.