Google error disrupts internet access in Japan

Last week a Google error caused nearly half of Japan to lose access to the internet. It took only a few minutes to rectify the mistake once it came to light, but it slowed internet connections for hours. Taking serious note of the matter, Japan's internal affairs and communications ministry launched an investigation into the issue.

Around Friday afternoon, due to a mistake at Google, it appeared as if a large chunk of IP addresses were available for internet traffic to be routed through Google. Those IP addresses actually belonged to Japanese internet service providers, which resulted in a large amount of traffic that was meant for Japan being directed towards Google by major internet service providers like Verizon. However, as Google is not a service provider and is not meant to route traffic, all that traffic destined for Japan ended up in limbo.

Though connectivity was restored within an hour, connection speeds continued to remain slow due to the mistake, which hit industries like finance, where online trading was halted, and transportation - East Japan Railway Co riders were not able buy tickets or board trains.

The internet service providers that bore the brunt of the disruption were KDDI Corp. and NTT Communications, the latter of which provides service to well over seven million people.

BGP Mon, an industry recognised expert in network monitoring and routing security, reported that more than 135,000 prefixes on the Google-Verizon path were announced when they shouldn't have been.

According to BGP Mon the mistake hit ISP Jastel (Jasmine Telecom) in Thailand, which the company explained saying, ''If we take a closer look at the AS paths involved starting at the right side, we see the prefix was announced by 45629 (Jastel) as expected. Since Jastel peers with Google (15169) that's the next AS we see. The next AS in the path is 701 (Verizon) and this is where it is getting interesting as Verizon has now started to provide transit for Jastel via Google, The Register reported.

''Verizon (701) then announced that to several of it's customers, some of them very large such as KPN (286) and Orange (5511). So by just looking at four example paths we can see it hit large networks in Europe, Latin America, the US, and India (9498 Airtel).''