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Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works

#21

Post by emilw »

archangel_one wrote: post #14
ybaumes wrote: post #12

The author (Tom Paseka) wrote near the conclusion that himself addressed the Google's issue, by contacting a Moratel's engineer. Do you have the same feeling when reading the article? It sounds weird that Google did not triggered a recovery procedure on its own. Maybe I see bad things everywhere and you may call paranoïd, but could it be some sort of ("false") advertising on the side of cloudfare?

I'm not a network engineer, but it seems like the kind of thing that might be very hard to detect when you're already inside or near to the google.com domain. Or maybe CloudFlare just got there first. I don't think it's necessary to call BS on Cloudflare without any kind of evidence at all.

Stop excusing yourself for not being something, either read more and then comment or trust your gut feeling. (not meant to sound harsh)

Re: Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works

#23

Post by precisioncoder »

ybaumes wrote: post #12

The author (Tom Paseka) wrote near the conclusion that himself addressed the Google's issue, by contacting a Moratel's engineer. Do you have the same feeling when reading the article? It sounds weird that Google did not triggered a recovery procedure on its own. Maybe I see bad things everywhere and you may call paranoïd, but could it be some sort of ("false") advertising on the side of cloudfare?

The key quote seems to be "Looking at peering maps, I'd estimate the outage impacted around 3–5% of the Internet's population." so if it didn't affect google directly it would have to go through customer server -> network technicians which would probably take more than the 26 min that Google was down for those customers for. I'm sure they would have been right on it if it hadn't have been fixed so fast.

Re: Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works

#24

Post by precisioncoder »

hayksaakian wrote: post #2

It really makes one wonder about the fragility of the internet.

I would say the resilience is what impresses me here. The fact that it's decentralized means that anyone can fix the internet. The fact that this one specific problem was fixed within 26 min by individuals realizing the problem and acting to fix it gives me a warm feeling.

Re: Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works

#25

Post by amalcon »

archangel_one wrote: post #14
ybaumes wrote: post #12

The author (Tom Paseka) wrote near the conclusion that himself addressed the Google's issue, by contacting a Moratel's engineer. Do you have the same feeling when reading the article? It sounds weird that Google did not triggered a recovery procedure on its own. Maybe I see bad things everywhere and you may call paranoïd, but could it be some sort of ("false") advertising on the side of cloudfare?

I'm not a network engineer, but it seems like the kind of thing that might be very hard to detect when you're already inside or near to the google.com domain. Or maybe CloudFlare just got there first. I don't think it's necessary to call BS on Cloudflare without any kind of evidence at all.

This is basically correct. BGP is weird. The addresses for one of Google's many datacenters were routed incorrectly for packets coming from some subset of IP space. Unless Google is running active ping tests to that subset of IP space, the way they would normally detect it is for someone to call and complain.

In this case, the author decided to take a shortcut and call the owner of the "problem peer" directly.

Re: Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works

#26

Post by JohnLBevan »

ojii wrote: post #20
jvehent wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cellphones ?

There's a trend to use VoIP on cellphones too (see LTE). So in the future this will not help at all.

Is there some way to say "ignore DNS results from this provider", such that were you to spot an issue you could block that provider's information (and anyone replicating their version of the truth) and thus find a valid path. If that were possible you wouldn't be reliant on a third party to resolve the issue to get your system working, and once your system worked, you could contact them to resolve the issues for all.

Re: Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works

#27

Post by antidoh »

sudhirj wrote: post #8
jhull wrote: post #6

Couldn't a rogue government easily take down the internet this way? Seems like if one guy in Indonesia can take out Google by accident, a government entity could do the same.

The moment people realize that the rogue network was being malicious, they'd stop trusting it - ignoring all announcements it might make. It might take a few hours for order to be restored, though.

Enough time for a purge or to gain an advantage in an invasion. This might even be on checklists for such actions.

Re: Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works

#28

Post by michaelt »

ybaumes wrote: post #12

The author (Tom Paseka) wrote near the conclusion that himself addressed the Google's issue, by contacting a Moratel's engineer. Do you have the same feeling when reading the article? It sounds weird that Google did not triggered a recovery procedure on its own. Maybe I see bad things everywhere and you may call paranoïd, but could it be some sort of ("false") advertising on the side of cloudfare?

  It sounds weird that Google did not triggered a recovery procedure on its own.
It's possible they didn't have the personal contact details for the engineer capable of fixing the problem.

We all know how hard it can be to contact a competent person at a big corporation when you have a problem [1]. Would Google find it easier than every other human being?

[1] http://xkcd.com/806/

Re: Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works

#29

Post by mpyne »

jganetsk wrote: post #18
prof_hobart wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realise there's more than one meaning for "glue" these days, presumably (including "something that binds together")?

There's also more than meaning for "literally" these days.

That only makes it more likely that what was said has a semantically correct meaning though (or is that what you meant?).

Re: Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works

#30

Post by JohnLBevan »

sudhirj wrote: post #8
jhull wrote: post #6

Couldn't a rogue government easily take down the internet this way? Seems like if one guy in Indonesia can take out Google by accident, a government entity could do the same.

The moment people realize that the rogue network was being malicious, they'd stop trusting it - ignoring all announcements it might make. It might take a few hours for order to be restored, though.

Would it be possible to claim to own Google's IP, then on receiving the packets intended for Google forward them on to the real IP (without accidentally forwarding them back to yourself)? That way someone could hijack & interrogate these packets without being spotted (at least without causing service outage / only adding slight delay). Alternatively could they route these requests to a clone as an advanced phishing scam?
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