The document summarizes major internet outages that occurred in 2016, including DDoS attacks, infrastructure overload from peak traffic, and outages caused by fragile infrastructure and lack of redundancy. Some key trends identified are that the internet is vulnerable to DDoS attacks and failures of critical infrastructure like DNS. Planning and testing are important to avoid outages from overloaded networks or misconfigurations. The document recommends monitoring critical services, building resilient networks with redundant infrastructure, and being proactive in testing and identifying bottlenecks. It includes demonstrations of outages from a DDoS attack on Dyn, infrastructure overload during a Powerball lottery, and a route leak impacting Amazon traffic.

1. 2016 Internet Outages
Trends, Insights & Analysis
Archana Kesavan
Product Marketing Manager

2. 1
About ThousandEyes
ThousandEyes delivers visibility into every network your organization relies on.
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4 top 6 US Banks

3. 2
State of the Internet in 2016
• DDoS Attacks
– DNS based, high volume attacks
• Infrastructure Overload
– Network & applications unable to
handle peak traffic
• Internet Fragility
– Localized cable cuts can cause
world-wide impact
• Redundancy is important!
Trends

4. 3
• The Internet is vulnerable and
dependent on critical
infrastructure like DNS.
What did the 2016 outages reveal?
• Planning oversight and insufficient
pre-production testing can result
in poor user-experience.
In a DDoS State of Mind Infrastructure Overload
• Cable cuts, user-induced BGP
misconfigurations can be fatal.
• Prolonged outages due to lack of
redundant infrastructure.
Internet Fragility Resiliency & Redundancy

5. 4
• Monitor revenue generating assets.
• Manage your DNS service providers.
• Keep routing in-check.
Prepare for the Year Ahead
• Diversify with multiple data centers, upstream
ISP providers and DNS providers.
• Ensure efficient server load-balancing,
Monitor business
critical services
Build resilient
networks
• Baseline your network to identify bottlenecks and
ISP behavior.
• Pre-test your environment.
Be Proactive

6. 5
Demo
1. Monitor your critical services for DDoS Attacks
Dyn DDoS Attack

7. 6
DDoS: Dyn Sees Availability and Loss Issues
Correlates with
100% packet loss
Low of 0%
availability

8. 7
DDoS: Dyn Traffic Terminates in Telia
Anycast IP
accessible
from some
locations
Traffic
terminating in
Telia network

9. 8
Demo
2. Overloaded networks & service delivery
Powerball unable to handle heavy traffic

10. 9
Powerball Outage
Page load time
spikes to
10seconds at the
time of the
lottery

11. 10
Powerball Outage
Powerball introduces
Microsoft cloud data
centers to handle the
uptick in traffic
100% packet loss

12. 11
Powerball Outage
Powerball futher
introduces Edgecast
CDN a few minutes
after the lottery to
handle traffic

13. 12
Demo
3. Impact of misconfigured routes/route-leaks
Amazon route leak through Hurricane
Electric

14. 13
Before the Route Leak
Amazon /20
prefix
advertised by
Amazon AS
16509 to
upstream ISPs

15. 14
Amazon Route Leak
Route leak
introduced
results in traffic
from Portland
going via Zurich
to reach Amazon
in the US
100% packet loss
within Hurricane
Electric node in
Zurich

16. 15
Amazon Route Leak
Upstream ISP introduces new /21 prefix
Innofield introduces a more
specific prefix (/21) for Amazon
to a private AS. Results in all
traffic going via Hurricane
Electric to Amazon to be
dropped!!

17. 16
See what you’re missing.
Watch the webinar:
https://www.thousandeyes.com/resources/internet-outages-2016-webinar