[ih] Large scale BGP failure in early 90's

[Matt Mathis]

I vaguely remember that you had a hand in it, but I didn't want to say
anything.

Well, I want to consider contributing part of that story to a draft paper
about other types of centralized failures in otherwise properly
de-centralized systems.    People don't think about standards and
replicated implementations as being non-decentralized resources, but that
story makes the point.

First step, correct some of the details and language in my 2 sentences.
This might be sufficient to enable searching.

Thanks,
--MM--
Evil is defined by mortals who think they know "The Truth" and use force to
apply it to others.
-------------------------------------------
Matt Mathis  (Email is best)
Home & mobile: 412-654-7529 please leave a message if you must call.



On Tue, May 27, 2025 at 11:37 AM Tony Li <tony.li at tony.li> wrote:

>
> I am the perp.  What would you like to know?
>
> T
>
>
> > On May 27, 2025, at 11:31 AM, Matt Mathis via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > Is there a writeup (or does anybody recall) a large-scale BGP failure in
> > the early 90s, when one ventor was testing a feature to make routes less
> > preferred (AS prepending or doubling) which caused all gated based BGP
> > implementation to lock up?   Unfortunately the processing order was:
> parse
> > the test route, forward test route, and then lockup.  So the test route
> > successfully flooded the entire routing system before locking up all of
> the
> > NSFnet and many other networks.
> >
> > I am looking for a more complete and accurate description of this event.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > --MM--
> > Evil is defined by mortals who think they know "The Truth" and use force
> to
> > apply it to others.
> > -------------------------------------------
> > Matt Mathis  (Email is best)
> > Home & mobile: 412-654-7529 please leave a message if you must call.
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