While I was waiting for a website to load (it didn't, it timed out) I was playing around with traceroute and decided to do one to verizon.com:
C:\Users\Me>tracert verizon.com
Tracing route to verizon.com [192.76.85.245]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms 1 ms <1 ms Wireless_Broadband_Router.home [192.168.1.1]
2 5 ms 4 ms 4 ms L100.BSTNMA-VFTTP-165.verizon-gni.net [96.252.13
.1]
3 9 ms 7 ms 9 ms G0-5-5-6.BSTNMA-LCR-22.verizon-gni.net [130.81.1
88.150]
4 12 ms 19 ms 9 ms ae0-0.BOS-BB-RTR2.verizon-gni.net [130.81.209.94
]
5 75 ms 76 ms 74 ms 0.ae1.XT2.SAC1.ALTER.NET [140.222.225.217]
6 75 ms 76 ms 74 ms GigabitEthernet7-0-0.GW9.SAC1.ALTER.NET [152.63.
55.77]
7 75 ms 75 ms 75 ms verizon-gw.customer.alter.net [157.130.193.66]
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * verizon-gw.customer.alter.net [157.130.193.66] reports: Destinati
on net unreachable.
Trace complete.
So, that'd be why posting on here is taking me ages... I really hope someone at Verizon has noticed and is working on getting traffic through alter.net restored, since the domain appears to be owned by Verizon Business.