Ay carumba! Can you hear the frustrated scream from these keyboards! The dreaded Wow Internet Outage has struck! The first clue of a Wow outage was the internet connect was slower than mud. Slower than the days of dial up and those were s*l*o*w.
Help is on the way for the DIY internet fixer and diagnosis because this these type of outages seem to be connected to Murphy’s law and a quick fix is needed. The WOW internet outage may be under a DDOS attack; this can affect Wowway customers (or any other internet provider.) If your WOW internet is fading in and out, inaccessible yet your cable television is fine then you may be experiencing a denial of service which is causing a Wow internet outage.
Is There A Wowway Outage?
The last few weeks a very interesting internet outage has occurred. Around 10- 11 p.m. EST every night the internet ceases to work, it is sluggish or the speed resembles a dial up connection of years ago.
For the past four Saturdays beginning in late evening, a WOW cable outage occurs and the internet ceases to be accessible. A definite pattern has emerged which is so frustrating! The usual protocol begins when checking for a wowway outage:
- Check all cords. Cords look fine.
- Check the if the cable connection is tightly attached to the router. Router looks good.
- Check the cable connection coming into the house. Is the cable connector tightly attached? Connection is excellent.
- Does the router need to be reset? Router looks good, but just in case. Reset the router.
- All cables look securely connected to their various ports. Now onto the internet to seek information.
- Check the outage maps ( I use downdetector dot com). Yes, an outage exists. You are not alone!
- Check the comments on the outage map.
- Check social media. Check the facebook page for WOW and the twitter feed. Are others in your immediate or extended area suffering an outage?
Why do all my connections, the router, the hardware and software all look good, but the internet speed is like a snail?
There may be a WOW Internet Outage because of a DDOS attack which is denying internet access to its’ customers. The denial of service is what you are experiencing and is occurring at the internet provider level. This explains why all systems look great on your side and the problem is on the provider side.
What Is A DDOS Attack & Wow Internet Outage?
A DDOS attack is a Distributed Denial Of Service attack on a server. In layman’s terms large packets of information are targeted to a company’s computer system with the intent to overload the system; therefore, as in the case of the internet provider, users cannot access the internet.
The DNS servers of my internet provider WOW are overloaded and cannot process the customers request to access the internet. A DNS (Domain Name System) uses your IP address to allow your computer to access the internet.
Obviously it is more complicated than the above sentence, but for customers who probably don’t want to know the particulars of a distributed denial of service attack that is the thumbnail explanation.
So how am I currently on the internet, but the indicators exist for a wow internet outage? The twitter feed of WOW chimed in and @ theWowbuzz suggests the Google DNS workaround which is customer service friendly while WOW attempts to solve the DDOS internally.
The Google Work Around For A Wow Outage And DDOS Attack
The internet and its’ immediate connectivity can indeed be a wonderful service and it is a service that is easily taken for granted. We expect immediate service 24/7.
Google provides free and open DNS servers which are easily accessible. Where I pay WOW cable to access the internet with their DNS servers, Google provides the same service for free. (But you do need to pay for an internet connection to use Google’s DNS servers.)
In order to solve my Wow Internet Outage I followed the directions below to change my internet access via the WOW DNS server to Google’s DNS servers. Immediate success and access to the internet.
How To Change Your DNS server?
There are not universal directions to change the DNS server on your desktop or laptop or tablet. The directions vary due to your operating system.
First step is to search: change google DNS and a link will appear to follow the directions for your device.
You will be changing the DNS servers for each device separately.
Theoretically you could change the DNS of your router and then every device which accesses the internet via the router will automatically connect; however one must determine their technical prowness and I changed the access to the DNS server individually for each device.
What is consistent is the DNS address for the Google Open DNS protocol:
“The Google Public DNS IP addresses (IPv4) are as follows:
- 8.8.8.8
- 8.8.4.4
The Google Public DNS IPv6 addresses are as follows:
- 2001:4860:4860::8888
- 2001:4860:4860::8844
No cause for worry. The directions on the Google DNS site are clear, concise and easy to follow. There you have it!
If your Wow outage is because of a DDOS outage resetting the DNS servers to the Google servers is a quick work around which will allow immediate access to the internet.
And When The Wow Outage Is Over And Service Returns?
There appear to be two different thoughts as to if the DNS process should be reversed between the WOW DNS servers and Google DNS servers.
Some experts say yes, the servers should be reset back to Wow’s DNS servers.
Some say no and keep Google DNS as the main DNS.
Your choice.
I tend to switch back and forth between the WOW and Google DNS servers depending upon which server is providing the best connectivity.
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andriaperry says
That was way over my tech head! Glad you are back!
tab says
I hear ya… 🙂 info to bookmark which I hope no one will need, but ya never know!
Fred Sanford says
Dude, thank you so much. Our internet has been going out like crazy (15-20 per day) over the past two weeks and messing up my work big time. I had no idea I could do this (I’m a tech dummy). However, I went to Google’s DNS site, followed the instructions and so far, so good. No more outages on my workstations. Thanks again!!
tab says
You are quite welcome – hope your issues are resolved.