Windstream Network Down, Then Restored

By Josh Long

A majority of Windstream Corp.’s Internet customers were unable to access email and the Web early Tuesday morning, but the telecommunications company has restored services.

At about 3:30 a.m. Central time, Windstream’s DNS servers couldn’t be accessed, company spokesman Scott Morris said.

“We had a DNS outage this am,” Windstream wrote on Twitter. “Redundancy was in place, but didn’t help due to the routing issue.”

Little Rock, Ark.-based Windstream restored Internet service at 8:30 a.m. Central time and email was fully restored about an hour later, Morris said.

Windstream has roughly 1.35 million Internet customers, and Morris said most were impacted.

“Everybody who uses the public Internet would have been affected. It was certainly the vast majority,” he said. “We’ve addressed it on Twitter and through our call centers.”

Morris said the company is continuing to investigate the cause of the problem.

The interruption in services occurred roughly two weeks after Windstream completed its acquisition of New York-based PAETEC Holding Corp.