[LINK] Optus Outage

[Narelle Clark]

Rumour has it was a BGP update from an external source that wasn't filtered
properly with which the BGP route reflectors then overloaded the internal
routers. Persistently.

It was clearly an internal transport problem arising from an underlying IP
protocol. BGP fits that bill completely as it would be redistributed, and
clearly their management network isn't sufficiently out of band. Once a
network of that scale goes down like that, you can't just turn it back on
and expect it to all work fine - millions of devices all want to
re-register at once, and all those state changes across the network have to
converge...

Narelle

On Wed, 8 Nov 2023 at 10:30, Alex (Maxious) Sadleir <maxious at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Around 4am, Optus networks re-announced all their BGP routes at once
> https://radar.cloudflare.com/routing/as7474
> https://radar.cloudflare.com/routing/as4804
> This is indicative of a change management malfunction, akin to IBM's
> 2016 eCensus routers restarting with no routes
>
> https://www.itnews.com.au/news/ibm-treasury-in-settlement-talks-over-census-failure-440066
>
> The VoWifi infrastructure seems to be online but unable to connect any
> calls
> https://goughlui.com/2023/11/08/breaking-optus-nationwide-outage-08-11-2023/
> More alarmingly 000 doesn't work on landlines
> https://twitter.com/lucethoughts/status/1722029287727825124 contrary
> to advice from emergency services
> https://twitter.com/nswpolice/status/1722028862161449151
>
> On Wed, Nov 8, 2023 at 10:08 AM Tom Worthington
> <tom.worthington at tomw.net.au> wrote:
> >
> > Any more news on what caused the Optus network outage? On ABC Canberra
> > Radio this morning I suggested it was most likely a software upgrade
> > which went wrong, and would be fixed by 6pm.
> >
> > Is VoWiFi working?
> >
> > I use Telstra, but when COVID-19 struck, I purchased an Optus 4G modem,
> > with an Optus SIM. This was in case Telstra went down.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Tom Worthington http://www.tomw.net.au
> > _______________________________________________
> > Link mailing list
> > Link at anu.edu.au
> > https://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
>
> _______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> Link at anu.edu.au
> https://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
>


-- 


Narelle
narellec at gmail.com