[ISN] Cisco routers caused major outage in Japan: report

From: InfoSec News (alerts@private)
Date: Wed May 16 2007 - 23:38:59 PDT


http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/051607-cisco-routers-major-outage-japan.html

By Jim Duffy
Network World
05/16/07

Cisco routers were the source of a major outage May 15 in an NTT network 
in Japan, according to an investment firm bulletin.

Between 2,000 and 4,000 Cisco routers went down for about 7 hours in the 
NTT East network after a switchover to backup routes triggered the 
routers to rewrite routing tables, according to a bulletin from CIBC 
World Markets. The outage disconnected millions of broadband Internet 
users across most of eastern Japan.

Cisco says it could not say which specific router models were involved.

"Cisco is working closely with NTT East to identify the specific cause 
of the outage and help prevent future occurrences,” a Cisco spokesman 
said in an e-mailed reply. “At this time, Cisco and NTT have not 
determined the specific cause of the problem."

NTT East and NTT West, both group companies of Japanese telecom giant 
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), are in the process of finalizing 
their decisions on a core router upgrade, according to the report.

The routing table rewrite overflowed the routing tables and caused the 
routers’ forwarding process to fail, the CIBC report states.

“Clearly, this failure doesn't reflect well on (Cisco) and at the very 
least highlights the need for two vendors,” states CIBC analyst Ittai 
Kidron in the report. Kidron states that NTT West is evaluating Juniper 
core routers while East evaluates the Cisco platforms.

“That said, we don't expect the failure at NTT East to influence its 
decision with respect to its choice of core router vendor,” Kidron 
states in the bulletin. “In fact, as router capacity was partly 
responsible for the failure, it is possible the outage could accelerate 
NTT's transition to Cisco's newer core router, the CRS-1.”

NTT was one of the initial testers of the CRS-1 when the product was 
launched three years ago.

“We don't believe the decisions would change based on this event,” 
Kidron concluded. “Juniper still remains a leading contender at NTT West 
and Cisco at NTT East.”

All contents copyright 1995-2007 Network World, Inc.



_____________________________________________________
Attend Black Hat USA, July 28-August 2 in Las Vegas, 
the world's premier technical event for ICT security 
experts. Featuring 30 hands-on training courses and 
90 Briefings presentations with lots of new content 
and new tools. Network with 4,000 delegates from 
70 nations.   Visit product displays by 30 top
sponsors in a relaxed setting. Rates increase on 
June 1 so register today. http://www.blackhat.com



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Wed May 16 2007 - 23:44:14 PDT