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  1. IL-0526 OpenStreetMap.org went offline, then read-only, for 56 hours after HE.net routing equipment cut both fibre uplinks
    OpenStreetMap Foundation2024
    Symptoms

    At 04:01 UTC on 15 December 2024, StatusCake monitoring sent SMS alerts that OpenStreetMap.org was unreachable. The website and the mapping API had gone completely offline at 03:53 UTC.

    Network unreachableService outage
    Trigger

    HE.net's routing equipment in Amsterdam failed at 03:53 UTC on 15 December 2024.

    Root cause
    Dependency failure
    Component
    ISP and transit networksDatabase replication
    Contributing factor
    Single point of failureNo runbook
    Detection

    StatusCake monitoring detected the outage at 04:01 UTC and sent SMS alerts, and the incident was reported to the operations team at once.

    Remediation
    • Activated a read-only backup instance of OpenStreetMap.org in Dublin
    • Brought a new Equinix Internet link into service in Amsterdam, bypassing HE.net and restoring full functionality
    • HE.net replaced its routing hardware and restored its service, and routing through HE.net resumed
    Action items
    • Move to a multi-ISP architecture so another provider can take over when one fails
    • Research backup ISPs for the Amsterdam servers, including BGP and keeping HE.net as a fallback
    • Add deeper route and latency monitoring and an automated escalation protocol
    • Hold failover drills for switching between ISPs and keep replication up to date
    • Agree SLAs with HE.net and Equinix Internet with defined escalation procedures and response times
    • Prepare the 4G out-of-band system as a manual fallback uplink that can sync Postgres replication data, and upgrade its hardware
    • Document outage communication procedures and delegate communication during outages
    • Investigate decoupling the OAuth service so authentication keeps working while the database is read-only
    Lessons

    Relying on HE.net alone left the Amsterdam servers with a single point of failure, so OpenStreetMap will keep multiple upstream providers. The 4G out-of-band link proved invaluable and should be able to carry data synchronisation. Resumed replication would have restored editing faster than the read-only backup. Frequent contact with the ISP gave no useful estimates, so the SLA needs to be better understood. Alerting on upstream connectivity needs refining, and a read-only OpenStreetMap.org also blocked logins to services that were not affected, because it could not save new tokens.

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This case involves Database replication and ISP and transit networks. kubegap audits a Kubernetes cluster for gaps like these, read-only, from Claude Code or Codex; its checks cite public reports like the ones in this library.

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By root cause1

Dependency failure1 case

Component
Database replicationISP and transit networks
Contributing factor
No runbookSingle point of failure
Organisation
OpenStreetMap Foundation
  1. IL-0526 OpenStreetMap.org went offline, then read-only, for 56 hours after HE.net routing equipment cut both fibre uplinks
    OpenStreetMap Foundation2024