Believe it or not, YouTube has been inaccessible in any corner of the world for about an hour. Among other consequences, all the sites that embed YouTube videos will load much slower and you won't be able to play the videos. OpenDNS has an explanation for this: "Youtube.com is down right now because Pakistan Telecom has decided to (accidentally probably) hijack their IP address space which means that nobody in the world can reach Youtube." The Pakistani government blocked the access to YouTube "because of content deemed offensive to Islam".
If you know more about this, tell us in the comments.
Update: the site seems to be back.
Labels: YouTube
Didn't they announce that there would be a scheduled downtime?
said on February 24, 2008 4:43 PM PDT:
This report says that Pakistan has blocked Youtube for blasphemous content.
Ne0nguy said on February 24, 2008 5:11 PM PDT:
Since when does Pakistan have control of teh internets?
but why it is down all over the world if it is blocked by Pakistan Govt.
Anjanesh said on February 24, 2008 10:23 PM PDT:
If its so easy to hijack an entire address space, then by now there would've been millions of website downtimes.
said on February 24, 2008 11:15 PM PDT:
Hell, if they want to block youtube for their country it's fine but you don't have to restrict the rest of the world's access.
Radoslav said on February 25, 2008 2:31 AM PDT:
Please note the word: accidentally. (Even though i still cant really see how is it possible.)
said on February 25, 2008 5:34 AM PDT:
Quote:
Hell, if they want to block youtube for their country it's fine but you don't have to restrict the rest of the world's access.Then why again doesn't wikileaks.org doesn't resolve to me? Last time I checked, I was in Italy, not in USA.
Please note I'm not defending Pakistan's actions here.
said on February 25, 2008 7:22 AM PDT:
Oh yeah, this really instills confidence in the sytem that seeks to host my medical records and other personal info. "for my convenience"...
It is actually not too difficult, if the downstream ISP isn't filtering properly. If YouTube's IP space is only a few netblocks, one can announce them very specifically (perhaps as individual "class C" or /24 routes), and those routes will supercede the less specific announcement (as a single aggregate block). Typically, though, the world is protected from this behavior (whether intentional or otherwise) by filters at the ISP level. Apparently the Pakistani entity that made the announcement is connected well enough that filters were not in place to protect the rest of the world from propagating their "black hole" announcement...
Chris G said on February 25, 2008 3:16 PM PDT:
I didn't understand any of this yesterday, but from my reading today, here's my analogy that may help other people. People that know better, please correct me if needed.
Pretend you're going to the movies to see "Superbad". But suppose that just before you got there, some guy named Pak decides to open up his own ticket line, and he put a sign up that said "Buy Superbad tickets here". Since that's what you want to see, you go wait in his line. Well, it turns out that Pak thinks "Superbad" is not an appropriate movie, so he sells you a bogus ticket. Then when you try to go into the theater, you're denied access. So Pak shut down access to "Superbad" by creating his own line. Eventually the movie theater would catch on that he's doing it and put a sign up saying to ignore his line.
Hopefully that captured the issue without being too goofy. I read http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/pakistan_hijacks_youtube_1.shtml for details and had to google for terms I didn't know.
Does Google have a legal recourse here? I mean, if Comcast did this, I assume they could have their pants sued off. I'm less clear on international law, especially when governments are involved.
The 'net' is not 'secure' by any stretch from 'disruption', man-made or natural. Remember those 'cables' knocked out a week or so ago that knocked out the internet in Iran? It's kinda naive of 'us' to think there aren't greater and powerful forces at work to CONTROL access and distribution. Honest fellas. Think about it.
aw said on February 26, 2008 4:39 PM PDT:
It's essentially like 'accidentally' hijacking an area code to route it to somewhere else instead. This probably can happen in the telephone world, but there are lots of safeguards in place to prevent it. Also, the telephone world is strictly divided up by border so there's easy to make 'zones', this same division doesn't exist on the internet. Just like aircraft manufacturers say after an accident is due to the operator's problem:
"Carrier procedures require more scrutiny".
said on February 27, 2008 11:13 PM PDT:
youtube had a scheduled downtime. it was clearly posted on their posted on their website all day prior. I would appreciate if you would amend your blog to represent this. The fact that such an absurd idea as Pakistan blocking youtube was even considered makes me seriously question if I want to continue subscribing to this website.
No, there wasn't any scheduled downtime. These are announced beforehand and you'll still be able to access the homepage.
From BBC:
<< The ban was instigated by Pakistan on Friday. At the time, the BBC News website's technology editor, Darren Waters, said that to block citizens from accessing YouTube it was believed Pakistan Telecom "hijacked" the web server address of the popular video site.
Those details were then passed on to the country's internet service providers so that anyone in Pakistan attempting to go to YouTube was instead re-directed to a different address.
But the details of the "hijack" were leaked out into the wider internet by Hong-Kong based provider PCCW and as a result YouTube was mistakenly blocked by other ISPs around the world.
The block on the servers was lifted once PCCW had been told of the issue by YouTube engineers.
A statement from Google said that the problems lasted for "about two hours".
"Traffic to YouTube was routed according to erroneous internet protocols, and many users around the world could not access our site," it said.
A leading net professional told BBC News: "This was probably a simple mistake by an engineer at Pakistan Telecom. There's nothing to suggest this was malicious." >>
said on April 30, 2008 11:58 AM PDT:
Dude, this date is April 30th, 2008 and i think YouTube is down again, beucase neither of my two PCs can load it
Youtube http and ftp down this morning (May 3rd, 8:50 am, DT) from here too
said on May 3, 2008 6:22 AM PDT:
it's not there right now either.
said on May 3, 2008 6:28 AM PDT:
Today is May 3rd, 2008 and it seems to be inaccessible.
said on May 3, 2008 6:31 AM PDT:
i think it is cos i havent been able to access it from any of my pcs either
Darksun said on May 3, 2008 6:33 AM PDT:
Youtube is down again. I cannot load any videos, and no videos play on my blog either. What's this all about now?
It is 5/2/2008.
its sat. may 3 940 am est and youtube is down!
Bruno said on May 3, 2008 6:51 AM PDT:
OMG YOUTUBE IS DOWN AGAIN!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
said on May 3, 2008 6:58 AM PDT:
I cannot access youtube, I'm located in mexico.
said on May 3, 2008 7:05 AM PDT:
May 3rd 14:15 to current youtube down, google ip aggress and type that in it goes to youtube but all videos and most content missing no access to account section and fails to read cookie detailing logged in info.
said on May 3, 2008 7:12 AM PDT:
Right now, May 3rd, 2008. I can't reach youtube.com. For several hours.
said on May 29, 2008 3:37 PM PDT:
Youtube is down again!!!
said on May 29, 2008 3:40 PM PDT:
Youtube is down...
said on May 29, 2008 3:41 PM PDT:
Its back on!
said on June 1, 2008 12:09 PM PDT:
Still down. =(
@ all the anonymous people above:
If you bother to announce that YouTube is down for you, can you at least mention your location?
said on June 1, 2008 1:08 PM PDT:
Down. Washington, D.C. metropolitan area (Maryland).
said on June 1, 2008 1:09 PM PDT:
Youtube is down in White Plains, New York @ 4:08 pm
said on June 2, 2008 7:16 AM PDT:
Down in the UK;
This is absolute shit, if they are gonna react and block it at least have the fucking competence to do it correctly than worldwide. Pakistan have no jurisdiction over the internet, yet again balls bigger than their brain (not literally)
said on June 4, 2008 5:59 AM PDT:
Anyone else having a problem with youtube today (June 4th, JAPAN time)? Every time I try to go to the US URL, it redirects to jp.youtube ... and says:
The page isn't redirecting properly
Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.
* This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept
cookies.
I deleted all cookies and told FF to allow until closed...
Any ideas?
jcink said on June 12, 2008 10:10 PM PDT:
down right now for over 20 mins, cant reach it on any proxies either.
said on June 13, 2008 6:40 AM PDT:
Down again. Buttoning down the free speech hatches. Alien info getting out.
Australia Sydney.
