Faulty router stalls internet traffic

A misconfigured router caused a huge slowdown in internet traffic on Monday. The slowdown, which effected worldwide internet access on Monday morning and afternoon, was down to problems with overly long global BGP (Border Gateway Routing) autonomous system (AS) numbers.

Several readers have reported difficulty in reaching parts of the Internet today. The source of the problem appears to be with AS 47868 causing AS paths to become too long,” said Marcus H. Sachs, director of the SANS Internet Storm Center.

“Not much you can do about it unless you have access to your BGP router, in which case you might want to either block AS 47868 or limit the length of any AS path.”