Network infrastructure monitoring continues to be a critical function in our increasingly connected world, and ThousandEyes, a Cisco-owned analytics firm, provides essential visibility into how service providers manage performance challenges. Their latest weekly assessment reveals important trends in global connectivity disruptions, offering valuable insights for businesses and consumers who depend on reliable internet access.
During the seven-day period from February 9 through February 15, ThousandEyes documented 247 network outage incidents worldwide across multiple categories. This figure represents a 6% reduction from the previous week's total of 264 events, suggesting a modest improvement in overall infrastructure stability. The monitored sectors include internet service providers, cloud computing platforms, collaboration applications, and edge networks encompassing DNS services, content delivery networks, and security-as-a-service platforms.
The United States market saw even more significant improvement, with 136 recorded outages—a 13% decline from the 157 incidents reported during the prior week. This positive trend indicates that domestic infrastructure providers may be implementing more effective resilience measures or experiencing fewer systemic issues.
Notable Service Disruption: Madgenius Infrastructure Failure
One of the week's most significant incidents involved Madgenius, a Minnesota-based hosting and infrastructure provider headquartered in Apple Valley. On February 13, the company experienced a substantial outage that cascaded to numerous downstream partners across two continents.
The disruption began at approximately 12:50 AM Eastern Standard Time and persisted for 71 minutes, concluding around 2:05 AM EST. Network analysis indicated that the problem originated with Madgenius nodes situated in Columbus, Ohio, creating a ripple effect that impacted operations in both the United States and the Netherlands. The geographic scope of this incident demonstrates how localized hardware or software failures can have international consequences in our interconnected digital ecosystem.
Such outages are particularly concerning for businesses that rely on managed hosting services, as they often lack direct control over the underlying infrastructure. The timing—occurring during early morning hours in the U.S.—may have mitigated some impact on real-time business operations, but global organizations with round-the-clock requirements would have felt the effects immediately.
International Impact: Hurricane Electric Routing Issues
Another major event affected Hurricane Electric, a prominent network transit provider based in Fremont, California. On February 10, the company experienced a complex outage pattern that disrupted connectivity for customers and partners across an extensive list of countries including the United States, Mexico, India, South Africa, the Netherlands, France, Egypt, Ecuador, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Puerto Rico, Sweden, and Austria.
The incident commenced at 5:40 PM EST and unfolded over a 25-minute period, though actual service interruption lasted approximately 15 minutes. Initial indicators pointed to problems with Hurricane Electric nodes in Dallas, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; and Charlotte, North Carolina. Within five minutes, the issue had spread to include nodes in New York City, suggesting a rapidly propagating problem within their core network architecture.
What made this outage particularly noteworthy was its intermittent nature. After initially appearing to resolve, nodes in Charlotte began exhibiting failure conditions again seven minutes later, indicating that the root cause had not been fully remediated. The complete restoration of service occurred at 6:05 PM EST. This stop-start pattern can be more disruptive than a continuous outage because it complicates failover procedures and makes it difficult for dependent systems to maintain stable alternative routing paths.
Comparative Analysis: Previous Week Performance
To fully contextualize these figures, it's instructive to examine the preceding week's data. From February 2 through February 8, ThousandEyes recorded 264 global outage events, which itself represented a 16% improvement from the 314 incidents documented during late January. This two-week downward trend in disruption frequency offers cautious optimism that network operators are successfully addressing systemic vulnerabilities.
Interestingly, U.S.-specific outages during the February 2-8 period totaled 157, a marginal 1% increase from the 156 recorded the week before. This suggests that while global infrastructure shows improvement, domestic networks may be experiencing unique challenges requiring targeted attention.
The previous week also featured significant incidents, including a disruption involving Zayo Group, a Tier 1 carrier based in Boulder, Colorado. On February 6, Zayo's outage impacted customers across multiple continents, including the U.S., United Kingdom, Singapore, Australia, and Japan. Such events involving backbone providers are particularly impactful because they affect numerous downstream ISPs and enterprise customers who depend on these high-capacity routes for their primary connectivity.
Implications for Digital Business Operations
These weekly fluctuations in outage frequency underscore the inherent complexity of modern internet infrastructure. Organizations must recognize that even with redundant connections and diverse provider relationships, they remain vulnerable to upstream failures beyond their direct control. The geographic distribution of these incidents—from Columbus, Ohio to international nodes—illustrates that no region is immune to potential disruptions.
For enterprise IT leaders, these reports serve as crucial intelligence for risk assessment and contingency planning. The data enables more informed decisions about provider selection, geographic distribution of resources, and the implementation of robust failover mechanisms. Companies operating mission-critical services should pay particular attention to the timing and duration patterns of these outages, using them to validate their own disaster recovery procedures.
The concentration of outages among specific providers also highlights the risk of infrastructure consolidation. When numerous businesses depend on a limited number of hosting or transit providers, a single incident can have disproportionate economic impact. This reality argues for deliberate diversification strategies and careful evaluation of service level agreements that guarantee specific recovery time objectives.
Looking Ahead: Continuous Monitoring Essential
ThousandEyes' ongoing surveillance of global network performance provides an invaluable service to the digital economy. By maintaining comprehensive visibility across ISPs, cloud platforms, and edge services, they enable proactive identification of emerging issues before they escalate into widespread failures. The weekly cadence of these reports allows technology leaders to spot trends and adjust their strategies accordingly.
As organizations continue migrating critical workloads to cloud environments and adopting collaboration tools that demand stable connectivity, the importance of transparent infrastructure monitoring cannot be overstated. The modest improvements seen in mid-February should not lead to complacency but rather encourage continued investment in resilience and redundancy.
Network operators, for their part, can use this data to benchmark their performance against industry peers and identify areas requiring operational improvements. The downward trend in outage frequency suggests that lessons learned from previous incidents are being applied effectively, but the persistence of multi-region disruptions indicates that work remains to be done.
In conclusion, while the 6% reduction in global outages and 13% decrease in U.S. incidents represent positive developments, the continued occurrence of significant disruptions affecting multiple regions simultaneously serves as a reminder of the internet's shared vulnerability. Organizations that integrate these insights into their operational planning will be better positioned to maintain service continuity when the next inevitable outage occurs.