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

[Vint Cerf]

Gemini:

The early routers of the NSFNET's T1 backbone (starting in 1988) were built
using *IBM RT PC* (RISC Technology Personal Computer) systems.

Specifically, each "backbone node" of the NSFNET T1 network consisted of a
collection of *nine IBM RT systems* working in parallel. These systems ran
*AOS*, which was IBM's version of Berkeley UNIX.

Later, as the NSFNET upgraded to the T3 backbone, the routers were based on
the more powerful *IBM RS/6000* workstations.

On Wed, May 28, 2025 at 5:13 AM Vint Cerf <vint at google.com> wrote:

> there was a Mother's Day meltdown at AT&T - that might be what you
> remember.
> As to a Mills bug, you might be thinking of the early NSF Fuzzball
> backbone that was only 50 Kb/s and instantly congested.
> The next version, built by MERIT, IBM and MCI ran on 1.5 Mb/s optical
> fiber or wireline using IBM routers (RS series machines??)
>
> I will check with Hans-Werner Braun.
>
> v
>
>
> On Wed, May 28, 2025 at 3:16 AM Craig Partridge via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> Wasn't that the same pattern that took down the AT&T network c. 1990 (a
>> busted update that was propagated before being fully processed)?
>>
>> I seem to recall Dave Mills actually triggered a similar issue in the
>> early
>> Internet (I do recall he talked about some bug in his code and that some
>> authority figure, Vint?, was mad at him at the time).
>>
>> Craig
>>
>> On Tue, May 27, 2025 at 2:32 PM 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)
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>> if you must call.
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-- 
Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
Vint Cerf
Google, LLC
1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor
Reston, VA 20190
+1 (571) 213 1346


until further notice