A lot of people are so dependent on the Internet that a few hiccups can lead to widespread panic. While it's easy enough to curb the rage when online speeds slow down, it's a different matter altogether when the Internet stops working. That's exactly what happened Tuesday when Internet connection slowing down in various parts of the world and others shutting down entirely for a considerable portion of the day.
While North America was most heavily hit, the entire world felt the effects of the internet basically struggling under its own weight. The problem stemmed from what is known as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), a routing table that essentially contains all the pathways in the internet that data uses to travel to get to one point from another.
"BGP is what tier-one ISPs, your last-mile ISP and various large networks use to route data from their own machines to others, and vice versa. When you visit a website, that data bounces all over the world, through machines belonging to all manner of companies and organizations. To make this work, machines called routers (large commercial versions of what you have at home) keep a table of known, trusted routes through the tangled web," explained Matthew Sparkes, The Telegraph's Deputy Head of Technology.
As the Internet grows, the BGP grows as well to accommodate all possible pathways that data can use, allowing routers to pick the best one to facilitate connection in the fastest way possible. Unfortunately, there's a limit to how big the BGP can go and some of the routers can no longer keep up. This limit is 512K.
The 512,000 limit translates to 512 rows in the routing table each with 1,000 ports. Essentially, that translates to 512,000 possible routes data can use to travel around the Internet. In the same way that regular roads can get congested when too many vehicles are using it, the BGP bogs down when routers reach their maximum capacity. The result? Internet access slows down or completely shuts off until "traffic" eases.
While the incident on Tuesday did take Internet users by surprise, the problem itself was not unprecedented. It has been anticipated for years but the solution is expensive and difficult to implement so very little has been done about it. Not that anyone can be blamed--it is hard to overhaul the Internet. Many routers have already been replaced but mostly only those that have already reached their limit. As more eventually meet theirs, the problem that took out the Internet a few days ago will happen again.
Some of those affected by the 512K issue include LastPass, Liquid Web and eBay.
