In a recent statement, Optus, a subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications, has acknowledged the cause of the extensive network disruption that left nearly half of Australia’s population disconnected. The telecom giant clarified that the service interruption, which lasted for an unprecedented 12 hours on November 8th, was the result of a routine software upgrade that went awry, affecting the routing information within its systems.
This disruption not only inconvenienced over 10 million Australians but also sparked a significant political debate, putting the spotlight on the country’s telecommunications framework. The outage was traced back to early morning changes in routing information linked to an international peering network. These changes, Optus explained, had a cascading effect, overwhelming the safety limits on critical routers. As a result, these key network components disengaged from the Optus IP Core network as a protective measure.
Addressing the scale of the issue, Optus revealed that the process to restore connections was so extensive that it demanded physical interventions in some instances. Technicians were dispatched to various locations across the continent to manually reconnect or reboot the routers.
The complexity of the network and the sheer volume of reconnections required meant that the investigation into the root cause of the outage was more time-consuming than Optus would have preferred. Nevertheless, the company has been proactive in its response, stating that it has implemented changes to the network configuration to prevent a recurrence of this issue.
Optus’s commitment to ensuring such an event does not happen again is evident in their swift action to rectify the issue and their transparent communication with the public. Customers and industry watchers will be looking to see how these changes improve the resilience and reliability of Optus’s network infrastructure in the future.
