Is the Internet Slow Right Now?

If you think your internet service is running slow, you're not alone. A new report reveals that two of the largest internet providers in the United States are experiencing outages.

According to Slate, a new outage map details that internet users in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. are all dealing with extremely slow Internet service right now, as well as are many other U.S. cities.

The two internet providers being impacted by the outage are Level 3 and Cogent. The mass outage was discovered by Downdetector, an ISP monitoring service that gathers and "analyses network status reports to determine early interruptions."

My internet's slow AF at work this morn and it's really frustrating when you're tryna stream music.... pffft!

— I Heart Moosiq (@iheartmoosiq) December 18, 2017

Additionally, it's reported that Comcast has also been suffering from some slow service and outages, although they are said to be less severe than what Level 3 and Cogent are dealing with.

At this time there does not appear to be a clear explanation as to why the slowdown and outages are happening, but it could be due to a number of reasons.

The internet is so slow😩

— Claire 💋 (@feelingmedolan) December 18, 2017

The most common reason seems to be because of maintenance issues, but it's also possible that they issue could be a result of something more significant, such as a dispute between providers.