The culprit?

A major internet outage is affecting internet users nationwide since this morning, particularly those subscribed to Comcast’s internet service.

“Some customers are having issues with their XFINITY Internet service. We apologize & appreciate your patience while we work to fix,” Comcast tweeted to its customers this morning.

The outages are not just affecting Comcast customers, however, with sporadic slowdowns and problems also reported by Charter/Spectrum, AT&T, and Verizon customers.

One factor that may explain the outage affecting customers beyond Comcast is CenturyLink’s Level 3, which provides backbone services for several ISPs.

Outages affecting Level 3 just happen to be in major Comcast service areas.

Level 3 eventually did take responsibility for the outage in a statement to the media:

On Monday, Nov. 6, our network experienced a service disruption affecting some customers with IP-based services. The disruption was caused by a configuration error. We know how important these services are to our customers. Our technicians were able to restore service within approximately 90 minutes.

On Nov. 1, Level 3 officially became part of CenturyLink, as part of a $30 billion acquisition. Hopefully CenturyLink will spend a bit more and build additional redundancy into Level 3’s network.

As of 30 minutes ago, Comcast claims the internet outage has eased.