Tier One ISPs Dying

xbmodder writes "Two tier one ISPs are down today. At about 23:30PST both Verio and Level 3 starting having problems with routes. According to Level 3 this is a software upgrade gone awry. Is this the end for Level 3?" Many, many reports about this are coming in, and if you're wondering why the stories were rather sparse overnight, it's because it's difficult to post them without internet access. Hope everyone else is back online too.

What is this about?

[PlatinumX]

An ISP's server being down 1 day is unacceptable of course, but to say it is dying already? or is there more to these ISP's? (haven't heard of them before)

huh??

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would a software upgrae going wrong be the end of a gigantic Tier-1 ISP?

Re:point of the internet?

[Detritus]

Nope. Redundancy and reliability cost money. Fast, cheap, reliable, pick two. Take a look at a typical network and count the single points of failure. Then there are common mode failures, like bugs in router software, that can take down entire networks.

Re^2:TEOTWAWKI

[Anonymous Coward]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Domesday [reference.com]

Are ATMs using Tier1?

[Ruvim]

I wonder, can this outage affect Banks ATMs and if it would, who would be held responsible for people not being able to get their money and all the problems [google.com] originating from it?

So much for the internet surviving a nuclear war!

[Viol8]

Now it can't even survive a software upgrade on some of the routers!

Re:Isn't God trying to tell us something?

[m50d]

People have been able to say something like that at every point in history. And I'd hardly call this nastier than hurricanes, and the Tsunami was worse than either them or this. The sky is not falling.

Mod parent funny

[Zwets]

Insightful? I certainly hope comparing a short Internet outage to large disasters is a joke..

Re:TEOTWAWKI

[bodger_uk]

Domesday, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday [wikipedia.org] is the middle English spelling of Doomsday.

Re:What is this about?

[shokk]

Yeah, that's it. They're dead. You pinned it right on the nose.
They won't be back tomorrow. All gone.

Reality check: An internet outage, no matter how big, is no different than a power outage. Yeah, here in the US we would be talking about loss of power to both coasts with only the middle left running. But after the outage life goes on.

Re:Level 3?

[RPoet]

If they go under, well Tier 1's don't ever really die. Chances are one of the other Tier 1's will buy their assets and it'll be business as usual. Usually the buyer is MCI.

And with fewer and fewer tier 1's, is it any wonder things like this happen?

FFS, what a fucking dreadful summary

[Cally]

Is this the end for Level 3?

No, of course not, you blithering imbecile. L3 had a 2 hour global routing meltdown. Now, it's fixed. Whilst their routes were flapping, other carriers saw transient increases in latency and some problems with reachability, to some sites. However, everything continued to work properly for non-L3 customers. Two hours later L3's routes are back and working properly. End of story, nothing to see here, move along please.

Slashdot editors, do you really expect us to believe that no-one had submitted a more coherent or accurate story than this one? Come on, for heaven's sake.

Anyway, a network engineer's view can be seen in the overnight traffic on NANOG: http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/2005-10/ [merit.edu] "Tier One ISPs dying" indeed. Worst. Story. EVER.

Re:FFS, what a fucking dreadful summary

[Guppy06]

"No, of course not, you blithering imbecile. L3 had a 2 hour global routing meltdown. Now, it's fixed."

However, L3 has been having "issues" this month that have left a lot of lower-tier ISPs in the uncomfortable position of explaining to their customers "We know the internet is down but there's nothing we can do about it." This outage really can't be good for their reputation, and I can see more potential customers taking their money elsewhere because of this.

Just because the technical issues have been fixed doesn't mean their finances have been fixed as well.