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Updates

2024 January 15 Internet Outage Information

3:58PM January 15, 2024

UPDATE - January 16, 12:35 pm: Great news! Our HomeWorks Connect internet service was restored at 9:45 am this morning. Since then, our network engineer has been running diagnostics and checking our equipment for damage, and he just reported that everything looks good and we are all clear!


All subscribers should now be back online. If you are still experiencing issues, please reset your router, and if that does not work, give our fiber team a call at 800-668-8413. Please note that we are still working with one of our bandwidth providers to return our network to full capacity, so you might experience slightly slower speeds than normal today, but we expect this issue to be resolved within a couple of hours.


Thank you all for your patience as we have worked through this issue. As previously stated, we are already looking into our options for the future to ensure an incident like this never impacts our subscribers to this degree again, and we will send subscribers an email in the coming days detailing our go forward plan.


We are aware that internet service has gone down for all of our HomeWorks Connect subscribers. This has been caused by the extreme weather effecting the HVAC system at a major third-party data center that our services go through, and this is affecting other providers, as well. We have sent our own employees down to address any equipment on our end that may need to be replaced due to this issue, and the third-party vendor is working to restore things as quickly as they can.


After our recent consultation with our third-party data center, we wanted to provide you with an important update regarding the internet/phone outage that is currently affecting our entire HomeWorks Connect network.

  • If you use your internet for remote work, school, or other necessities, we encourage you to make an alternate plan for the next 24+ hours.
  • If you subscribe to HomeWorks Connect's Talk service and don't have another communication line out, we encourage you to make an alternate communication plan for the next 24+ hours so that you can call out in case you have an emergency.
  • If possible, please refrain from using our electric outage phone line or SmartHub to report this outage, so that those lines can remain clear for any potential electric outages that come in during this time. We are aware that this internet outage is currently affecting all of our subscribers.


WHAT HAPPENED?


Unfortunately, the major Chicago data center that our internet services route through is still experiencing HVAC equipment failures caused by extremely cold temperatures and wind chills in the area. This cooling system failure has caused interior temperatures to exceed the threshold in which equipment in the facility can safely operate. As a result, the network equipment of several internet and communications providers that route through the data center, including HomeWorks Connect, has been temporarily shut down by the facility to protect the equipment from overheating.


WHEN WILL SERVICE BE RESTORED?


The data center has had technicians on site since yesterday working to cool down the facility, but at this point, they are estimating that it will be at least 24 hours from now before they are able to get temperatures down to a safe level for operations to resume. This means that it will likely be at least 24 hours before we are able to restore internet/phone service to our subscribers.


WHAT IS HOMEWORKS DOING TO RESOLVE THIS ISSUE?


We have been in constant communication with the third-party data center since this issue arose, and we have our own network engineer and fiber technician on site to be able to repair any potential damage to our equipment and turn it back on as soon as the facility allows us to do so. We are also actively looking into other data center entrances to see if there is any way to establish a connection quickly that would allow us to restore service to our subscribers before our current data center is back up and running.


WHAT STEPS SHOULD YOU TAKE DURING THIS OUTAGE?





IMPORTANT BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON OUR DATA CENTER



HomeWorks Connect's connection to the internet is located in one of the largest data centers in the world. We chose to place our equipment in this major Chicago data center because it allows direct peering with almost all the major internet services on the planet, improving our subscriber experience by reducing latency and making economical upgrades to bandwidth possible.

 

It is an extremely secure facility with multiple redundancies to ensure reliable connections to the internet. This data center is located in a very large (1.1 million square feet) building with 50 standby generators, multiple 30,000-gallon tanks of fuel and an 8.5 million-gallon refrigerated chiller system designed to keep this kind of thing from happening.


We apologize for the inconvenience and frustration caused by this unprecedented occurrence at our third-party data center. We will keep you updated as soon as additional information becomes available.


Thank you for your continued patience as we work through this issue.


- HomeWorks Connect


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