Central provider failure causes “mega drop” of the internet: from Facebook to VISA affected | Technology



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A failure of the company CenturyLink, one of the world’s leading corporate internet service providers, sparked a “Mega drop” services during this Sunday, affecting from social networks to payment services, through online games and transmission radio and television.

According to the monitoring site DownDetector, the problems began during the early hours of this Sunday in Chile, and were suffered most strongly on the East coast of the United States, Europe and parts of Asia, although the whole world suffered intermittent access problems to some suppliers, including Chile.

The error in the addressing of the internet routes – due to a problem with the IP addresses – caused a domino effect that did not leave the giant standing: Facebook, eBay, VISA, Electronic Arts, Twitter, Fortnite, Xbox Live or the BBC, were only some of those affected.

For users, this translated into various problems, from not being able to access these sites at all, to intermittent failures to post, watch television, or listen to radio signals (Radio Bío Bío’s signal has suffered problems as well).

According to the cybersecurity consultant and researcher on his Twitter account, Ali simbai, that the ruling also affected CloudFlare, a multinational that manages from website addresses to content hosting, exacerbated the problem.

Meanwhile, after 9:30 this morning, CenturyLink acknowledged the problem, briefly announcing that its technicians are working as “priority one” in solving the bugs.

A generator of “ghost routes”

Cesar Venegas, CEO of the Chilean internet service provider DigitalProServer (DPS), explained to BioBioChile that although the problem is still being investigated, it seems to have its origin in an ASN, an “autonomous system” of the network that began to generate addresses “ghost”.

“ASNs are networks that manage their own traffic, that is, they manage traffic routes between themselves and other ASNs. All internet providers and institutions that manage their data autonomously have their ASNs with unique identifiers and the “AS3356“It is an ASN that belongs to CenturyLink / Level3, where Level3 is one of the largest providers in the world,” he said.

“The issue is that that AS was advertising” ghost “networks that do not exist, without knowing the exact reason until now. That is, when you tried to go from the browser to services like eBay or Twitch, your request was going nowhere, ”adds Venegas.

“The worst thing is that when other providers tried to withdraw their connections to solve the problem, the AS did not allow them,” he says.

One user on Twitter ironically summed up the situation: “AS3356 is the new Hotel California: your routes can enter but they will never leave”.

After 11:15 am in Chile, CenturyLink confirmed through Twitter that their systems were working properly again. To that they added public apologies.

“We can confirm that all services affected by today’s IP outage have been restored. We understand how important these services are to our clients and we sincerely apologize for the impact this disruption caused, “they said.



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