Cases12 cases

2 to 6 of 12

1. IL-0564 Linode's Miami, Milan and Sao Paulo data centers had packet loss as traffic moved onto congested alternate paths

   Linode2025

   Symptoms

   Customers using Linode's US-MIA (Miami) and IT-MIL (Milan) data centers saw packet loss and brief performance problems on 14 September 2025 from 17:42 to 18:43 UTC. BR-GRU (Sao Paulo) had the same packet loss on 15 September 2025 from 01:44 to 04:22 UTC.

   Packet loss

   Trigger

   A gradual increase in prefixes pushed the routing between the core router and the edge router past the maximum number of permitted prefixes.

   Root cause

   Capacity exhaustion

   Component

   BGP routingBackbone network (WAN)

   Contributing factor

   –

   Remediation

   • Raised the prefix limit on all the data center routers

   Action items

   • Raise the thresholds of the sessions between Akamai's backbone and the data center ECOR routers
   • Improve the existing alerting and check its severity before limits are reached, with escalation to the right team for immediate action

   View case
2. IL-0348 Scaleway's FR-PAR region lost public internet connectivity when one 100 Gbps backbone link was saturated

   Scaleway2025

   Symptoms

   On 10 March 2025 at 16:22 UTC, public internet connectivity in Scaleway's FR-PAR region broke for all products. Most internet traffic between the FR-PAR-2 availability zone and the rest of the PAR region was blackholed for about five minutes, while VPC traffic and Dedibox RPN kept working.

   Packet lossService outageHigh latency

   Trigger

   While Scaleway's network team connected a new data center to the FR-PAR backbone, a human mistake in a router configuration rerouted more than 1 Tbps of traffic between OpCore DC3 and DC5 through a single 100 Gbps link.

   Root cause

   Operator error

   Component

   Backbone network (WAN)Object storageAuthoritative DNS servers and records

   Contributing factor

   Automation amplification

   Detection

   The router configuration error was detected quickly and rolled back within four minutes.

   Remediation

   • Rolled back the router configuration, restoring the correct configuration at 16:27 UTC

   Action items

   • Harden the peer review and production communication process for changes
   • Add failsafes and tests before network configuration is applied at backbone level
   • Deploy the fix for the Object Storage synchronisation software issue

   View case
3. IL-0344 Linode's US-West data centers in Fremont and Santa Clara lost connectivity as the fibre circuits between them failed

   Linode2023

   Symptoms

   On 12 February 2023, customers in Linode's US-West region could not reach their Linodes. Santa Clara customers lost Internet connectivity after a change made at 8:45 UTC until it was reverted at 10:13 UTC, and later in the day the connection between the Fremont and Santa Clara data centers was cut completely, leaving both with degraded service or a full outage until 16:25 UTC; customers could also have trouble provisioning, powering down or rebooting services.

   Network unreachable

   Trigger

   A single link of the A-side fibre circuit between Fremont and Santa Clara went down on 11 February, the whole B-side circuit followed on 12 February, and during troubleshooting with the hardware vendor a non-intrusive command triggered a rare bug that took down all A-side links.

   Root cause

   Software defect

   Component

   Backbone network (WAN)NIC, cable and switch port link

   Contributing factor

   Overlapping failuresHarmful manual action

   Detection

   The response team began investigating when the A-side link went down on 11 February. The status page opened at 10:22 UTC on 12 February to investigate reports of connectivity issues in the US-West region.

   Remediation

   • Reverted the change that removed internet traffic from the Santa Clara border routers
   • Performed an emergency code upgrade of both circuits, restoring connectivity between the sites
   • Restored the B-side path with the hardware vendor and fiber provider, regaining full redundancy

   View case
4. IL-0225 An IGP purge command made every Microsoft WAN router recompute routes, causing global latency, timeouts and packet loss

   Microsoft Azure2023

   Symptoms

   From 07:08 UTC on 25 January 2023, customers saw long network latency and timeouts when connecting to resources in Azure regions and to other Microsoft services such as Microsoft 365 and Power Platform. Microsoft's monitoring detected DNS and WAN issues from 07:11 UTC.

   High latencyIntermittent timeoutsIntermittent connection failuresPacket lossNetwork unreachable

   Trigger

   A network engineer adding capacity to the global WAN in Madrid ran a step of a recently changed standard operating procedure that purged the IGP database; on the router manufacturer involved, that command runs on all IGP-joined routers instead of only the local one.

   Root cause

   Configuration change

   Component

   Backbone network (WAN)Interior routing (IGP)BGP routing

   Contributing factor

   No configuration testsUnverified assumptionExcessive blast radiusHarmful manual action

   Detection

   Monitoring detected DNS and WAN issues from 07:11 UTC and alerted the on-call engineers within 5 minutes of the command being run. The team reviewed all recent changes and identified the command by 08:20 UTC. The engineer making the change was not informed of the alerts because of the unqualified changes to the SOP.

   Remediation

   • Restarted by hand the paused WAN health and traffic engineering systems, which ended the remaining packet loss

   Action items

   • Audit and block similar widespread-impact commands across all three vendors for all WAN router roles
   • Give on-call engineers real-time visibility of approved and unqualified activity on network devices
   • Run regular mandatory operational training and attestation of following all SOPs
   • Have the Change Advisory Board review all SOPs still pending qualification within 30 days

   View case
5. IL-0267 Wikimedia's eqsin cache site went unreachable when both of its transport links to the core data centers were down

   Wikimedia Foundation2023

   Symptoms

   On 10 January 2023 at 16:37 UTC Icinga reported "BGP status on cr3-eqsin is CRITICAL: BGP CRITICAL - AS1299/IPv6: Active - Telia, AS1299/IPv4: Active - Telia", and from 16:45 the hosts in Wikimedia's eqsin site went DOWN with "PING CRITICAL - Packet loss = 100%". Users normally directed to eqsin, mostly in the APAC region, could only read Wikipedia pages already cached in eqsin.

   Network unreachable

   Trigger

   Planned maintenance by the transport provider took down eqsin's second transport link while the first was still down from a long fiber cut.

   Root cause

   Dependency failure

   Component

   Backbone network (WAN)BGP routingCDN and edge network

   Contributing factor

   Single point of failureIgnored early signal

   Detection

   Automated monitoring: Icinga BGP status alerts for cr3-eqsin at 16:37 and cr2-eqsin at 16:44, followed by a flood of host-down alerts and three pages at the same time.

   Remediation

   • Depooled eqsin from DNS
   • Repooled eqsin

   Action items

   • Create a backup GRE tunnel for eqsin (T327265)
   • Ensure the long-down transport link comes back up properly once it is fixed (T322529)
   • Automatically parse maintenance notifications and alert on conflicting maintenance (T230835)

   Lessons

   The site was depooled quickly, and "depool first, investigate later" was the right attitude. A flood of host-down alerts usually means a network problem. eqsin stayed too long on a single working transport link, SREs did not catch that the downtime of the two transport links overlapped, and the provider's planned maintenance was not recorded in a task or reminder.

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