Internet issues in US/Canada

• Osayidan wrote on 2014-08-19 17:10
  http://www.zdnet.com/internet-hiccups-today-youre-not-alone-heres-why-7000032566/
  
  Probably no more than 2 or 3 people on here know what this even means but posting it anyways \o/
  
  

  If you found your Internet speed has been pathetic today and some sites wouldn't load at all, you're not alone.
  
  The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing tables hit the limit, and older routers failed — taking some of the Internet with them.
  
  Many tier-one Internet service providers (ISPs), and in turn, the last mile ISPs they support, experienced technical problems that resulted in bad service throughout the US and some parts of Canada.
  
  According to postings in the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) mailing list, the professional association for Internet engineering and architecture, there have been "major problems with multiple ISPs since around 4-5 AM EST."
  
  According to NANOG, and complaints tracker DownDetector, many Internet providers — including Level 3, AT&T, Cogent, Sprint, Verizon, and others — have suffered from serious performance problems at various times on Tuesday.
  
  And they won't be the last.

  
  
  This happened last week, and will apparently be an on-going issue until affected ISPs take appropriate action to prevent it.
  
  More technical article: http://www.bgpmon.net/what-caused-todays-internet-hiccup/
• Taycat wrote on 2014-08-19 18:12
  idk my internet has been fine
• Space Pirate Nithiel wrote on 2014-08-19 20:02
  My internet HAS been pretty shitty lately. And we DO have Verizon. Seems like it's time to call them and get some free service because of their shitty quality. D<
• Taycat wrote on 2014-08-19 20:24
  AT&T are outside right now doing work
• Osayidan wrote on 2014-08-19 20:38
  It's not the kind of problem a road tech will be working on so that's probably unrelated.
• Taycat wrote on 2014-08-19 20:45
  probably
  then again, they rarely come out here anyway, lol
• Yoorah wrote on 2014-08-20 00:13
  Yeah, this is not an issue with residential Internet service specifically. Rather, it was a problem in the Internet core, which in turn affected some users on some ISPs who were trying to access certain sites, for example.
  
  The TL;DR version of the problem is that a certain ISP made an 'oops,' which caused other ISPs' systems to get overloaded. Some ISPs have been using ancient gear because it still works... and said gear didn't have enough extra capacity to handle said 'oops.'
  
  Hopefully this will convince some ISPs to upgrade some of their old equipment to new, powerful boxes. :3
• Osayidan wrote on 2014-08-20 02:43

  Quote from Yoorah;1241592:

  Yeah, this is not an issue with residential Internet service specifically. Rather, it was a problem in the Internet core, which in turn affected some users on some ISPs who were trying to access certain sites, for example.
  
  The TL;DR version of the problem is that a certain ISP made an 'oops,' which caused other ISPs' systems to get overloaded. Some ISPs have been using ancient gear because it still works... and said gear didn't have enough extra capacity to handle said 'oops.'
  
  Hopefully this will convince some ISPs to upgrade some of their old equipment to new, powerful boxes. :3

  
  
  If they were using cisco they can supposedly apply a temporary workaround: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/switches/catalyst-6500-series-switches/117712-problemsolution-cat6500-00.html
  Though getting more modern equipment is the best solution regardless.
  One of my customers who runs porn sites and does a lot of traffic peering has better gear than some of these ISPs...
• Yoorah wrote on 2014-08-20 04:10
  LOL.. that's some nice gear for porn sites... I guess that would make it a PSP.
  
  I should add that I used the term "core" loosely. ISPs typically have at least somewhat modern devices in their actual core. I like to call 'em supercore routers, such as the CRS and NCS series. Even the ASR9K series, which was originally designed as an aggregation router (connected to supercores), has been used by some ISPs as a supercore router itself. The thing can handle 4 million routes per slot and has 100 Gbps ports.
  
  Technology moves pretty fast, though. It makes sense that ISPs don't want to throw away gear that is working fine, if they can re-purpose it for a less critical job, or a job that doesn't require uber levels of performance. For example, most ISPs still offer dial-up services, including Start--a third party ISP with whom I have service. You don't need a cutting edge box to connect those 56k lines. xP
• Osayidan wrote on 2014-08-21 01:39

  Quote from Yoorah;1241623:

  LOL.. that's some nice gear for porn sites...

  
  
  Well they run sex.com so that's part of the reason. They have a whole cage in a datacenter here, they do so much traffic peering they started up their own small ISP and offer bandwidth to a few datacenters around town as well as some larger office buildings.
  
  They help prove my theory that sex and laziness is the driving force behind innovation.
• Username wrote on 2014-08-25 13:37
  I have not seen an issue yet. Ive noticed my computer being slow, but not my internet.
• Yoorah wrote on 2014-08-25 14:31
  The issue was fixed a while ago even for those who did feel it briefly. xP
• Kingofrunes wrote on 2014-08-27 13:03
  Well seems that Time Warner derped this morning as well.
  
  http://gizmodo.com/if-youre-a-time-warner-cable-customer-that-was-awake-in-1627363495?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull+%28Gizmodo%29
  
  ISPs really need to get their act together :/
  
  It really left me with a lot of confusion. Luckily I had a mobile phone I could test with and use as a hotspot to play around with tracert to discover this was a problem in the first place.
• Aubog007 wrote on 2014-08-27 14:50
  Yeah, Time Warner died for me in the morning.
• Osayidan wrote on 2014-08-27 15:02
  TW died for everyone. Though not sure if it's related to this issue I haven't found any articles with good info.