Juniper red-faced as BGP issue causes widespread outages

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Networking vendor Juniper Networks yesterday admitted a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) edge router issue hit a number of its customers, causing companies' websites to go down.

Customers across the world reported seeing core dumps by their Juniper routers on Monday, with many suspecting a BGP update was to blame. The vendor subsequently confirmed suspicions.

“This morning, Juniper learned of a Border Gateway Protocol edge router issue that affected a small percentage of customers," said Mark Bauhaus, executive vice president for services, support and operations at Juniper Networks.

A software fix is available, and we’ve been working with our customers to immediately deploy the fix.

"A software fix is available, and we’ve been working with our customers to immediately deploy the fix.”

Juniper did not go into detail on what the "issue" was. It appeared a BGP update did not work perfectly with routers being managed by the company's Junos operating system, versions 10.2 and 10.3.

US-based ISP Level 3 Communications was hit hard, according to reports.

"Level 3's network experienced several outages across North America and Europe relating to some of the routers on our network," Level3 said yesterday.

"Our technicians worked quickly to bring systems back online. At this time, all connection issues have been resolved, and we are working hard with our equipment vendors to determine the exact cause of the outage and ensure all systems are stable."

Thousands of websites were reportedly affected. Link shortening site Bit.ly said it was experiencing issues thanks to Level 3's problems.

"bitly is operating normally, but there is a general connectivity issue at Level 3 affecting multiple ISPs and networks," the company said on its Twitter feed.

BlackBerry maker RIM was also hit by connectivity problems, alongside UK ISPs Easynet, Eclipse Internet and MerulaSupport, according to reports.

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