AS 7007 incident
Encyclopedia
The AS 7007 incident was a major disruption of the Internet
on April 25, 1997 that started with a router operated by autonomous system
7007 (MAI Network Services, although sometimes incorrectly attributed to the Florida Internet Exchange) accidentally leaking a substantial part of its entire route table to the Internet, creating a routing black hole
.
Probably because of a bug in the affected router, the routes leaked were deaggregated to /24 prefixes, which were more specific than the routes originally present on the Internet, and had the AS path rewritten to 7007, leading the Border Gateway Protocol
used by the Internet's routers to prefer the leaked routes. This was then exacerbated by other problems that prevented the routes from disappearing from other networks' routing tables, even after the original router that had sent them had been disconnected. The combination of these factors resulted in an extended disruption of operations throughout the Internet.
Analysis of this event led to major changes in ISPs' BGP operations intended to mitigate the effects of any subsequent similar events.
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
on April 25, 1997 that started with a router operated by autonomous system
Autonomous system (Internet)
Within the Internet, an Autonomous System is a collection of connected Internet Protocol routing prefixes under the control of one or more network operators that presents a common, clearly defined routing policy to the Internet....
7007 (MAI Network Services, although sometimes incorrectly attributed to the Florida Internet Exchange) accidentally leaking a substantial part of its entire route table to the Internet, creating a routing black hole
Black hole (networking)
In networking, black holes refer to places in the network where incoming traffic is silently discarded , without informing the source that the data did not reach its intended recipient....
.
Probably because of a bug in the affected router, the routes leaked were deaggregated to /24 prefixes, which were more specific than the routes originally present on the Internet, and had the AS path rewritten to 7007, leading the Border Gateway Protocol
Border Gateway Protocol
The Border Gateway Protocol is the protocol backing the core routing decisions on the Internet. It maintains a table of IP networks or 'prefixes' which designate network reachability among autonomous systems . It is described as a path vector protocol...
used by the Internet's routers to prefer the leaked routes. This was then exacerbated by other problems that prevented the routes from disappearing from other networks' routing tables, even after the original router that had sent them had been disconnected. The combination of these factors resulted in an extended disruption of operations throughout the Internet.
Analysis of this event led to major changes in ISPs' BGP operations intended to mitigate the effects of any subsequent similar events.