Human Error Cripples the Internet (1997)

Summary

July 17, 1997 Human Error Cripples the Internet By PETER WAYNER ompanies, computers and people started disappearing from the Internet at 2:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday after a human error at Network Solutions Inc., the company with the primary responsibility for maintaining the master list of domain names, corrupted Internet addresses around the world. “Tens of millions of people are using the Internet, and very few of them know how truly complex it is.” Adam Clayton Powell 3d,The Freedom Forum The error caused e-mail to be returned to senders with messages akin to "address unknown" and also prevented many people from finding Web sites. Alex Gadea, the President of Vscape International, a Web site hosting company, was among the hundreds of systems people rousted out of bed Thursday morning when server alarms started going off around the world. Gadea's company pays a private service to check his 10 main Web servers every 10 minutes and beep him if they fail to respond. The beeps started at 5:30 in the morning. The problem occurred when the database of the top level domain name server (DNS) became corrupted. This database acts as the telephone book for the Internet, matching names like e-mail addresses and Web URLs to four-byte numbers known as IP (for Internet Protocol) addresses, which steer data through the Internet to the appropriate computer. For instance, the name "www.nytimes.com" corresponds to nine different computers that answer requests for The New York Times on the Web, one of which is 199.181.172.242. This four-byte address is used by the Internet in a manner roughly analogous to a nine-digit zip code to direct packets of information directly to the correct computer. Each day at 2:30 a.m., Network Solutions updates its directory, known as a "lookup table," to reflect the changes made during the day. These include adding new addresses for anyone who has registered a new domain name and deleting addresses for sites than have surrendered their names. Net...