Home » Dns and Bgp: this is what caused the downtime of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram

Dns and Bgp: this is what caused the downtime of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram

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A hand tore the Facebook page (and of all its world) from the big telephone directories of the Internet: it can be explained with this metaphor, what happened with the down of more than 6 hours of Facebook and its subsidiaries, Instagram and WhatsApp. Never had a disservice been so prolonged, not only for Facebook, but also for any other giant of the Net.

Many experts have commented that the Facebook down reveals the multiple fragilities connected to social networks: their intrinsic fragility, the fragility of Internet systems, our fragility in relation to them (i.e. our dependence on these tools). And it is precisely the technical causes of the down that reveal these weaknesses, because they sink into the basic structure of the Net.

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The down of the DNS
The problem, according to technical evidence that emerged in the past few hours, lies in the system of company domain names. They are the DNS, a sort of telephone directory for the Internet: they are the tool that converts a Web domain, such as facebook.com, into the actual Internet protocol (the abbreviation is Ip), which is the numerical address that corresponds to the site. Without that list, Facebook (in its entirety, with all its services) becomes unreachable on the Net. It is as if it disappears.

Without this map for orientation, computers and smartphones that go in search of Facebook (and WhatsApp, or Instagram) to interact with it get lost in dead ends.

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The problem in the BGP
On a further technical level, the problem at Facebook seems to have its origins in Border Gateway Protocol, in sigla Bgp. In the metaphor that sees the DNS as the Internet telephone directory, the BGP is its postal service: it is the actor who, following that list, leads the user to the desired resource. The Bgp determines the best routes through which the data must travel, consults the map and acts as a navigator.

The technical evidence that this was the cause is public: a few minutes before the Facebook platforms stopped working, many changes to Facebook’s Bgp paths emerged, as explained via Twitter by Cloudflare’s head of technology, John Graham-Cumming. Facebook has not commented on whether and why these changes really happened.

However, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince tweeted that, according to public data, those BGP routes were being published again: “This probably means the service is about to be restored.” And indeed it was, confirming that that was the cause. CloudFare has given the technical explanation here detailed.

The ultimate cause of the problem (in short, how was it possible that the compass was broken to find Facebook?) Is not yet known: it is certain that the problem was so serious, and so deeply rooted in the underlying structure of the Internet, by forcing the Facebook technicians to physically go to correct the network paths.

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Everyone’s problem
As we said, the problem reveals not only the technical structure of the Net, but also its socio-economic structure, because there was also a problem in accessing the sites and apps that were based on a login system based on Facebook servers: “This interruption highlighted our addiction to Facebook and its properties, such as WhatsApp and Instagram – said Brooke Erin Duffy, professor of communications at Cornell University – It highlighted the staggering level of precariousness that structures our increasingly labor economy. mediated by digital “.

And as if it were done on purpose, hearings continue in the US Senate where Facebook is accused of knowingly putting profit before the interests of users and society as a whole. Just as the structure of the social networks and our relationship with them have revealed themselves in all their fragility.

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