The Optus outage that stopped 10 million angry ns from getting any internet access may be due to a glitch during an internal update.
Early signs suggest a ‘misconfiguration’ of the telco’s border gateway protocol (BGP) routers caused the nine hour-plus nationwide meltdown on Wednesday.
Customers using the Optus network could not access the internet from 4am until about 1pm, although it took until 6pm to fully restore service to all users.
The outage was so serious that NSW Police urged family and friends of ‘vulnerable community members’ to check in on them in person because some many callers had been unable to access Triple Zero.
One tech expert, Trevor Long, told Daily Mail it was ‘the biggest telecommunications outage in n history’.
BGP is an essential factor in the movement of internet traffic globally which has been compared to the way GPS systems tell driverless cars where to go.
Customers using the Optus network could not access the internet from 4am until about 1pm, although it took until 6pm to fully restore service to all users
Over 10million Optus customers where left in the dark after being hit by the ‘largest telecommunications outages in n history’ (stock image)
READ MORE: Optus CEO’s mansion in photoshoot while the nation grinds to a halt
A team of stylists staged an elaborate photoshoot at the exclusive mansion home of Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin while her company’s network failure triggered chaos.
Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin
‘It’s like if all the GPS systems all failed at once, so all the cars on the road don’t know where to go, so they just stop,’ a private IT consultant who did not wish to be named, told Daily Mail .
Optus, as a network provider, needs its own BGP to direct its users’ attempts to visit web pages or send chats and emails to the correct internet addresses.
Every time users try to reach a website or send a message, the BGP packages data up into ‘packets’ that allow information flow successfully flow in both directions.
In this case a ‘misconfiguration’ is believed to mean that an error occurred in the way Optus’s BGP system works.
That stopped the essential back-and-forward exchanges of internet addresses.
While it is unclear exactly what caused the BGP issue, the IT consultant said it was either an internal problem – possibly when a system update introduced an error – or an external ‘denial of service’ type attack.
The latter is considered unlikely but hasn’t been ruled out, said Mike Bareja, deputy director of Cyber, Technology and Security at the n Strategic Policy Institute.
‘Its not likely this is something that would have been a malicious cyber attack but we won’t know the answer to that until there’s a really thorough forensic analysis undertaken.’
Earlier Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said a ‘technical network fault’ was responsible but wouldn’t say more.
‘It’s a very technical explanation for what happened. There is no soundbite that is going to do it justice, so we want to really bottom out the root cause and when we have that very clear and in a digestible form, we will be forthcoming.’
That was after Federal Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland blamed the outages on a ‘deep fault’ in the network, in a Wednesday morning media conference.
Mr Long, a high-profile commentator on n technology since 2007, said it was likely Ms Rowland had no further information to describe what was ‘a monumental problem with Optus’ network’.
‘We’ve never had an outage of a mobile network that also extended to that same telco’s broadband network,’ he added.
The IT consultant said the fact there was an issue with the BGP system isn’t important as Optus being unable to fix the problem quickly.
The outage was so serious that NSW Police urged family and friends of ‘vulnerable community members’ to check on them because Triple Zero calls couldn’t be made
Tech expert Trevor Long (pictured) said the minister most likely meant to describe a ‘monumental problem with Optus’ network’ while the issue remains unknown and unsolved
‘You wouldn’t think they’d have just one system in place, they should have a failsafe and a backup.’
BGP systems are supposed to act like a mesh of networks, he said, so that when one route to an IP address doesn’t work, the data can be sent and received using a different pathway.
The massive outage will do little to help the beleaguered Telco repair its tattered reputation, which was battered by a huge data breach 13 months ago.
In June this year Roy Morgan ranked Optus ‘the most distrusted brand in ‘, ahead of Facebook/Meta and Telstra.