Mediacom Internet outage affects 22 states

COLUMBIA — An Internet outage that affected Mediacom customers in Columbia Wednesday night and Thursday morning affected a total of 22 states.

The outage, which began in some areas Tuesday night, stemmed from a problem at Mediacom's Internet Network Operation Center in Iowa. A processing issue routed Internet network traffic incorrectly, Mediacom spokeswoman Phyllis Peters said. It was not due to an equipment failure; traffic coding got changed within the system. This created problems with how the system responded and, in turn, caused customers to lose their Internet connections.

Because the Internet and television signals are wired through different fibers, Peters said, the problem affected only Internet connections.

Mediacom worked Tuesday night with its equipment vendors to identify the problem. Early Thursday morning, Mediacom added additional monitoring technologyto help address the issue.

All customers in the 22 states affected should have Internet service now, and those customers still experiencing problems can try restarting their computers and rebooting modems or routers, Peters said. The latter requires unplugging the modem and waiting a few minutes before plugging it back in.

Peters said the company should be able to immediately address this issue should it arise again.