MainOne Cable has assumed responsibility for a glitch that temporarily caused some Google global traffic to be misrouted through China, saying it accidentally caused the problem during a network upgrade.
The company noted that it had caused a 74-minute glitch by misconfiguring a border gateway protocol filter used to route traffic across the internet. That resulted in some Google traffic being sent through MainOne partner China Telecom.
According to MainOne, it had investigated the matter and implemented new processes to prevent it from happening again
“We have already put more stringent processes in place to avoid a reoccurrence.”
We have investigated the advertisement of @Google prefixes through one of our upstream partners. This was an error during a planned network upgrade due to a misconfiguration on our BGP filters. The error was corrected within 74mins & processes put in place to avoid reoccurrence
— MainOne (@Mainoneservice) November 13, 2018
Some web services provided by the internet giant, Google was briefly disrupted and unreachable for some users after some traffic intended to reach the web giant was rerouted through other networks.
In the past, border gateway protocol filter glitches have caused multiple outages, showing that traffic from global technology companies such as Google is vulnerable to disruptions caused by problems at other firms, including internet firms around the globe that help direct internet traffic.
Recall that in April 2017, incorrect instructions briefly sent traffic of Google and other internet companies through Russia in December and financial services firms.
However, some security experts said the incident highlighted concerns about the potential for hackers to conduct espionage or disrupt communications by exploiting known vulnerabilities in the way traffic is routed over the internet.
MainOne is a leading provider of telecom services and network solutions for businesses in West Africa. It has submarine cable system running down the coast of West Africa, state of the art IP NGN network, growing regional and metro terrestrial fibre optic networks, and data centre facilities enable broadband services for businesses needing online connectivity solutions in West Africa.
