Earlier quoted context omitted.
We almost went down the ‘this is a subterfuge to delete whistleblower evidence’ rabbit hole.
I saw a couple of people clearly guessing something along these lines but none of them seemed to be claiming that it was actually happening, more like “isn’t it convenient that…”
Update about the October 4th outage
121–130 of 239 posts
Re: Update about the October 4th outage
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
BGP has to converge to a single routing table. You are effectively asking is why is there a single routing table for the internet. To put in simple terms having a single routing table is what it makes it the internet we can share, otherwise it would just be a bunch of independent networks.
> BGP has to converge to a single routing table. It certainly does not. If I peer with you, neither of us (generally) announce that route to our other peers, but often announce to our customers. There are many routes that are not visible to everyone, and there is no single routing table for the internet. Each BGP speaker ends up with their own routing table, although there are a lot of similarities.
BGP in this context implicitly meant external BGP . Yes, no single router necessarily sees all the routes, but all routers combined generally see the internet as a single network of networks was my point.
Convergence in this context is how most ASN will resolve on where/how to route a specific ASN traffic.
It is hard to peer with someone and not trust the routing table they publish, that is why Pakistan could by mistake block YouTube for everyone few years back.
In this case if you peered with Facebook, and they published incorrect routing for their AS you would accept it.
This doesn't mean FB couldn't have used multiple ASNs did some rolling updates etc, however without knowing what exactly fb screwed up for five hours it is hard to say what they could done differently.
Re: Update about the October 4th outage
#123It just occurred to me to wonder if Facebook has a Twitter account and if they used it to update people about the outage. It turns out they do, and they did, which makes sense. Boy, it must have been galling to have to use a competing communication network to tell people that your network is down. It looks like Zuckerberg doesn't have a personal Twitter though, nor does Jack Dorsey have a public Facebook page (or the…
> It looks like Zuckerberg doesn't have a personal Twitter though He does: https://twitter.com/finkd
Re: Update about the October 4th outage
#124On a side note: when I browse to that page in Firefox (92.0.1) from HN I can't go back to HN - the back arrow is disabled. What gives?
Re: Update about the October 4th outage
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
There seems to be nothing uncertain about the immediate cause of the issue - Facebook revoked all of their BGP routes, and all of their IP addresses couldn't receive packets until they were restored.
The didn't revoke all their routes, FWIW, just a lot of them (including the anycast DNS routes)
It strikes me it's like DNS when you get a SERVFAIL, why not try the prior IP address. The similarity in the design here suggests there may be common reasoning??
Re: Update about the October 4th outage
#126It just occurred to me to wonder if Facebook has a Twitter account and if they used it to update people about the outage. It turns out they do, and they did, which makes sense. Boy, it must have been galling to have to use a competing communication network to tell people that your network is down. It looks like Zuckerberg doesn't have a personal Twitter though, nor does Jack Dorsey have a public Facebook page (or the…
> It looks like Zuckerberg doesn't have a personal Twitter though He does: https://twitter.com/finkd
It was amazing. I’m sad he remove it.
Re: Update about the October 4th outage
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
- It was government intervention - Facebook was hacked - They did it on purpose to bury the whistleblower story - No one could access Facebook offices - They had to cut open servers with angle grinders - Disgruntled employees changed DNS records - Lots of made up numbers for how much money Facebook/the rest of the economy was losing (or gaining) They probably rushed out this blog post just to dispel some of these rum…
> - It was government intervention There was an Indian opposition Member of Parliament blaming the current government that it blocked FB due to some protests being held in the Capital.
Re: Update about the October 4th outage
#128Re: Update about the October 4th outage
#129It just occurred to me to wonder if Facebook has a Twitter account and if they used it to update people about the outage. It turns out they do, and they did, which makes sense. Boy, it must have been galling to have to use a competing communication network to tell people that your network is down. It looks like Zuckerberg doesn't have a personal Twitter though, nor does Jack Dorsey have a public Facebook page (or the…
Re: Update about the October 4th outage
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw a couple of people clearly guessing something along these lines but none of them seemed to be claiming that it was actually happening, more like “isn’t it convenient that…”
The timing was uncanny. I still don't see a reason why it couldn't have been an intrusion/rogue employee? Like someone had access to a system to push router firmware updates or something?
Also IIRC an employee was posting on Reddit saying the incident started shortly after a network update was posted this morning.
When you know more about the tech and systems involved a mistake seems infinitely more likely than sabotage.