A massive power outage affecting much of the northeastern United States and parts of eastern Canada Thursday afternoon has not had any effect on the Internet yet, according to Internet performance monitoring firm Keynote Systems Inc.
As of 4:50 p.m. Eastern time, Keynote reported that the Internet was performing normally as were most major Web sites, though performance has slowed slightly at some news sites, likely due to increased traffic. All eight Internet backbones are also showing normal latency ratings.
Keynote credits the unaffected Internet performance to effective use of backup systems.
Power outages have been reported in New York, Albany, Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo, Toronto, Ottawa and parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut affecting an estimated more than 11 million people. Early reports indicate that the outage was caused by an overload of the Niagara Mohawk power grid.