1997 Internet Outage Caused by Human Error at Network Solutions
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1659447091
A baker's-dozen of insight crammed into one ring.
Summary
A human error at Network Solutions Inc. on July 17, 1997 caused a major Internet outage that corrupted domain name addresses worldwide. The incident began at 2:30 a.m. Eastern Time, preventing email delivery and web access for many users. Systems administrators like Alex Gadea of Vscape International were awakened by server alarms as the error propagated globally, highlighting the fragility of early Internet infrastructure and the critical role of domain name management.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledCompanies, computers and people started disappearing from the Internet at 2:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday after a human error at Network Solutions Inc.
The error caused e-mail to be returned to senders with messages akin to 'address unknown' and also prevented many people from finding Web
Alex Gadea, the President of Vscape International, a Web site hosting company, was among the hundreds of systems people rousted out of bed Thursday morning when server alarms started going off around the world.
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