Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram Outage: Why Did They Go Down?
Facebook's Extensive Outage: A Detailed Examination
The recent, day-long disruption experienced by Facebook represents the most prolonged and impactful outage the company has faced in several years. Around 9 a.m. PDT on the U.S. West Coast – the location of Facebook’s headquarters – access to Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger was abruptly lost.
Impact on Stock and Initial Response
The service interruption persisted throughout the trading day, resulting in a roughly 5% decrease in the company’s stock price compared to its Monday opening value. By the afternoon, services began to be restored as Facebook reportedly sent a team to its Santa Clara data center to perform a “manual reset” of the company’s servers.
The Uniqueness of the Disruption
What distinguished this outage was the complete disconnection Facebook experienced.
Initially, Facebook issued a brief statement via Twitter, apologizing for the difficulties some users were encountering in accessing their applications and services. Subsequently, reports surfaced indicating that the outage wasn't limited to external users; it also affected the company internally.
Internal Consequences for Facebook Employees
Employees reportedly found themselves unable to access office buildings, leading some to jokingly refer to the situation as a “snow day.” Work was significantly hampered as the outage also impacted internal collaboration tools.
Cause of the Outage – Initial Assessments
Facebook has not yet publicly commented on the root cause of the outage. However, security professionals suggest that evidence points to an issue within Facebook’s network infrastructure, effectively isolating the company from both the broader internet and its own internal systems.
Timeline of the Initial Disruption
According to John Graham-Cumming, CTO at networking firm Cloudflare, the first indications of trouble appeared around 8:50 a.m. PDT in California. He stated that Facebook “disappeared from the internet in a flurry of BGP updates” within a two-minute period.
Understanding BGP and Route Withdrawals
These updates were specifically BGP route withdrawals. Essentially, Facebook communicated to the internet that it was temporarily unavailable, akin to raising the drawbridge of a castle. Without available routes into the network, Facebook became isolated from the rest of the internet.
Due to the structure of Facebook’s network, these route withdrawals also disabled access to WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and all other services within its digital infrastructure.
User Experience and Initial Reports
Shortly after the BGP routes were withdrawn, users began reporting issues. Internet traffic intended for Facebook was effectively lost, failing to reach its destination, as explained by Rob Graham, founder of Errata Security, in a Twitter thread.
Users observed that Facebook applications were no longer functioning and websites were failing to load. Many reported experiencing problems with DNS, or the domain name system – a crucial component of internet functionality.
The Role of DNS in the Outage
DNS translates user-friendly web addresses into the machine-readable IP addresses necessary to locate web pages on the internet. Without a viable path to Facebook’s servers, applications and browsers returned errors resembling DNS failures.
Potential Causes and Speculation
The precise reason for the BGP route withdrawals remains unknown. While BGP can be vulnerable to manipulation and malicious attacks, potentially causing widespread outages, this is not the most likely scenario.
A more probable explanation is that a Facebook configuration update went awry, triggering a cascading failure across the internet. A now-deleted Reddit post from a Facebook engineer alluded to a BGP configuration error prior to the widespread awareness of the outage.
Recovery Timeline and DNS Propagation
Although the fix itself may be relatively straightforward, the full recovery process could extend for several hours or even days due to the nature of internet infrastructure. Internet service providers typically update their DNS records every few hours, but complete propagation can take up to several days.
Facebook's Apology and Service Restoration
“To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we’re sorry,” Facebook communicated via Twitter around 3:30 p.m. local time. “We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.”