If you felt like your Internet connection briefly died early Monday morning, you were not alone. About 9 am Eastern (6 am PT) many cable Internet customers along the East Coast and stretching down to Texas lost online connections. The glitch hit “most of our service areas,” Time Warner Cable told Twitter users.
The problem, now apparently resolved, also affected users of cable Internet provider RCN, which reported customers in Boston and through Pennsylvania briefly found themselves without connections.
The incident was surprising due to the growing reliance on the Internet and the relatively stable nature of online connections. The short outage only served to remind consumers their connection to Google or online shopping relies on a multitude of distant servers and switches. I found myself bewildered after not being able to connect to Google.