Routing Leak briefly takes down Google

This morning, users of Google around the world were unable to access many of the company’s services due to a routing leak in India. Beginning at 08:58 UTC Indian broadband provider Hathway (AS17488) incorrectly announced over 300 Google prefixes to its Indian transit provider Bharti Airtel (AS9498).
Bharti in turn announced these routes to the rest of the world, and a number of ISPs accepted these routes including US carriers Cogent (AS174), Level 3 (AS3549) as well as overseas incumbent carriers Orange (France Telecom, AS5511), Singapore Telecom (Singtel, AS7473) and Pakistan Telecom (PTCL, AS17557). Like many providers around the world, Hathway peers with Google so that their customers have more direct connectivity with Google services. But when that private relationship enters the public Internet the result can be accidental global traffic redirection.
Last fall, I wrote two blog posts here and here about the issues surrounding routing leaks such this one. Routing leaks happen regularly and can have the effect of misdirecting global traffic. Last month, I gave a talk in the NANOG 63 Peering Forum entitled “Hidden Risks of Peering” that went over some examples of routing leaks like this one.
Below is a graph showing the Continue reading
