A funny coincidence...
My Comcast service in Central California dropped out this evening between 1300~1600Hrs PST. I'd rebooted my cable modem & then my entire computer trying to force a recync, to no avail. I left it alone while I ate supper, came back, forced a refresh of all the "you don't have a connection" failed tabs, and suddenly I'm back up & online.
I'm not sure what caused the downtime, I'm not sure what they did to fix it, I'm just glad they recovered before I started going into withdrawls.
=-J