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One Broken Router Takes Out Half the Internet?
Silent Stephus writes "I work for a smallish hosting provider, and this morning we experienced a networking event with one of our upstreams. What is interesting about this, is it's being caused by a mis-configured router in Europe — and it appears to be affecting a significant portion of the transit providers across the Internet. In other words, a single mis-configured router is apparently able to cause a DOS for a huge chunk of the Net. And people don't believe me when I tell them all this new-fangled technology is held together by duct-tape and baling wire!"
A couple of Nuclear Subs probably cut an underwater cable...
My bad. I never should have cut that tape.
Bibo Ergo Sum.
Lucky Yankees with all your fancy technology. If I told you what we use, nobody would respond for fear that in attempting to respond I would cause a few fatalities.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
And took out THE _WHOLE_ INTERNET!!!!!
It's true! Ask my wife!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
What is Jen doing with The Internet??
Now I really don't know all that much about large-scale networking so maybe someone could explain this to me. What difference does it make if the router is rouge, versus say, green? or black?
Thanks for any insight :)
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
A router takes out 'half the internet' and I learn this from Slashdot?
Non, no, no. You messed up the troll and got modded "Insightful". Let me fix that for you:
A router takes out 'half the internet' and this is front page news at Slashdot? Slow news day?
Thank you, I'll be here all week...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Make sure you are using cat 5 bailing wire.
-- Terry
In other words, a single mis-configured router is apparently able to cause a DOS for a huge chunk of the Net.
This means the router was able to take out over 9000 internets. Quite impressive.
Since folks on Slashdot seem to like car analogies, I'll just mention that Red Cars Go Faster and assume that the same law applies for routers.
Now I really don't know all that much about large-scale networking so maybe someone could explain this to me. What difference does it make if the router is rouge, versus say, green? or black?
So they announced a route that was, shall we say, malformed. Part of the problem is that due to a Cisco bug (CSCdr54230), some routers choke on it instead of ignoring it. The bug is fixed. It was fixed some time ago. Nonetheless, it's a pretty bad bug, labeled as "1 - catastrophic" by Cisco (in red letters, even). Routers still running affected code versions are having issues.
And it's only at this point in writing my reply that I realize you were taking advantage of a pun by way of misspelling. I'll leave my reply anyway ;-)
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
> It must have been the "half the Internet" that I don't use.
The non-pr0n half.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
They need to replace it with a network that is designed to survive a nuclear attack. Oh wait, hang on....
Everyone knows rouges are overpowered, just ask any mage.
That's the problem. You shouldn't use rouge on your routers.
They think a rouge router is in vouge, but they're out of their leauge. We should haranuge them! A plauge on them! Rip out their tounges so they cannot aruge! Them and their colleauges. Nothing but demagouges and idealouges I say. There can be no dialouge on this matter. Send them to the moruge!
Are you intriuged by my ideas and want to subscribe to my travelouge?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
> It must have been the "half the Internet" that I don't use.
The non-pr0n half.
Such a place exists? 0.o
You left out 'updating your myspace page', 'writing poetry about how no-one understands' and 'cutting yourself'
Yay me!
Yes, Mages are known for powdering their cheekbones. Rogue's on the other hand, like to stab people in the back.
Yay me!
A router takes out 'half the internet' and I learn this from Slashdot?
Seriously, what is/was the impact? I work for a large e-commerce provider and haven't seen a thing that would indicate a problem today.
Well I'm not sure about you.
Personally, I have BIGGER news! A single router in a remote rural US state managed to take down the ENTIRE INTERNETS!!!!
Yes, indeed when I noticed my cat had unplugged the power adapter, I replaced it. Then the ENTIRE internet came back! It was amazing how I single-handedly brought back the whole internets. Al Gore would be proud.
Welcome to Sauronet... One Router to Rule them ALL!!!!
Don't worry, it wasn't a DOS attack. That was just the Internet becoming self-aware.
OK, on second thought, maybe worrying is in order.
Yeah, this was my first thought as well. It seems clear that the internet, while designed to route traffic through all sorts of alternate links, is almost certainly being routed through single, centralised listening posts at various intervals.
Rouge is overpowdered!
The last time I experienced a DOS attack it evolved into Windows. Didn't come out of that one unscathed.