{"id":216569,"date":"2023-11-15T21:11:58","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T21:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bestwnews.com\/?p=216569"},"modified":"2023-11-15T21:11:58","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T21:11:58","slug":"identity-of-third-party-that-brought-down-optus-network-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bestwnews.com\/technology\/identity-of-third-party-that-brought-down-optus-network-revealed\/","title":{"rendered":"Identity of \u2018third-party\u2019 that brought down Optus network revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Save articles for later<\/h3>\n

Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.<\/p>\n

The unnamed \u201cinternational peering partner\u201d that Optus said had contributed to its 16-hour-long network meltdown last week was its Singaporean parent company Singtel, it can be revealed.<\/p>\n

The embarrassing revelation comes as it can also be revealed a key executive, who left Canadian telco Rogers Communications less than two weeks after it last year suffered an almost identical outage to Optus, is now working for Singtel.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Customers were left in the dark after Optus experienced an outage across the entire country last week.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Louie Douvis<\/cite><\/p>\n

Jorge Fernandes left Rogers in July 2022 and joined Singtel in June this year as its chief technology officer \u2013 a role he held at Rogers for more than four years. Fernandes has been contacted for comment and this masthead does not suggest he was responsible for last Wednesday\u2019s outage.<\/p>\n

Both Optus and Singtel were approached for comment. Optus declined to respond.<\/p>\n

The Rogers outage affected 12 million users, with around 25 per cent of Canada losing internet connectivity for about 15 hours.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Singtel chief technology officer Jorge Fernandes, who formerly held the same role at Canadian telco Rogers, which suffered a similar network meltdown to Optus in July last year.<\/span><\/p>\n

An Optus engineer, who did not wish to be named due to the sensitive nature of last Wednesday\u2019s outage, said that at least part of the hesitancy to name Singtel as the \u201cthird-party\u201d probably had to do with the fact the parent company\u2019s board was visiting Sydney last week to meet Optus executives.<\/p>\n

Both revelations come ahead of a Senate inquiry that Optus chief executive officer Kelly Bayer Rosmarin will front on Friday into the outage, where senators including the Greens\u2019 Sarah-Hanson Young are expected to grill the telco boss.<\/p>\n

A separate source close to Optus, who was not authorised to speak publicly, told this masthead that the Singtel Internet Exchange, known as STiX, was the unnamed third-party \u201cpartner\u201d that Optus alluded to in a statement on Monday afternoon as the one sending routing information to the telco\u2019s routers on the day of the outage that put them into meltdown.<\/p>\n

Optus said those updates were sent \u201cfollowing a routine software upgrade\u201d. The Optus source added that the software update occurred at the Singtel Internet Exchange, not on the Optus network.<\/p>\n

Once received, the routing information changes then propagated through multiple layers in the Optus network and exceeded \u201cpreset safety levels\u201d on key routers that could not handle them, resulting in the routers disconnecting from Optus\u2019 core network \u201cto protect themselves\u201d.<\/p>\n

The changes meant technicians had to be deployed to key locations across the country to access routers that had gone offline so that they could restore services, which delayed restoration.<\/p>\n

The Singtel Internet Exchange is one of the many internet peering exchanges that help move vast amounts of data across the world. Peering allows two networks to connect and exchange traffic directly, sometimes without having to pay a third party to carry data across the internet. Not only does it lower the cost of moving traffic around, but it also improves performance and redundancy.<\/p>\n

Poor filters<\/h3>\n

Despite the Singtel Internet Exchange being one of the triggers for the outage, an Optus source said the Australian telco was primarily responsible for the outage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s still Optus\u2019 fault when it comes to its own network (unless Singtel required Optus to accept routes blindly),\u201d an Optus engineer, who was unclear what commercial agreements may have been in place, said.<\/p>\n

The source, as well as other external network engineers this masthead spoke to, said Optus should have had filtering rules in place that dismissed or ignored the update from the Singtel exchange.<\/p>\n

On the day of the outage, a senior Optus executive phoned a counterpart at content distribution network Akamai, another of the telco\u2019s peers, believing it had triggered the outage.<\/p>\n

By Friday, Optus engineers were still adamant that Akamai was partly to blame. However, Akamai definitively ruled this out in a statement on Monday night. \u201cAkamai did not trigger the outage,\u201d a spokesperson told this masthead.<\/p>\n

As more details of the cause of the Optus outage emerge, Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady said the nation\u2019s biggest telco had won new customers as a result of Optus\u2019 network meltdown. But she pushed back on calls for extra regulation, arguing that would force it to share its infrastructure in the event of another mass disruption.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Optus customers seek an explanation for the outage on Wednesday.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Chris Hopkins<\/cite><\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s outage affected about 10 million Optus customers, leading some to desert the company barely a year after it suffered the worst cyber breach in Australian history.<\/p>\n

The exact number of customers ditching Optus is yet to be determined, but speaking at an annual Telstra investor day in Sydney on Tuesday, Brady said Telstra had seen an uptick in new customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe take zero pleasure in any competitor or operator experiencing major outages,\u201d the Telstra boss said.<\/p>\n

While it was early days since the incident and Telstra was continuing to see elevated levels of new customers signing up, Brady said she \u201cwouldn\u2019t anticipate major shifts in [market] share\u201d.<\/p>\n

Telstra\u2019s executives were quick to spruik the resiliency of its network in front of investors, highlighting increased investment and reliability.<\/p>\n

Network sharing in the picture<\/h3>\n

Channa Seneviratne, Telstra\u2019s executive in charge of technology development and innovation, said the telco\u2019s mobile network was superior to competitors due to its \u201cbest in class resilience and security\u201d.<\/p>\n

Seneviratne said Telstra was in favour of network sharing in the event of a natural disaster like a bushfire, which would enable Optus or Vodafone customers to send texts or make and receive calls.<\/p>\n

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland and Emergency Management Minister Murray Watt and their departments have begun developing such emergency roaming capabilities \u2013 work that was already underway before last week\u2019s outage.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Alex Ellinghausen<\/cite><\/p>\n

But that was a very different proposition to network-sharing in the event of an outage, said Seneviratne.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast week we lost one of the national networks, roughly one-third of our carriers. We don\u2019t design our networks to have overhead to manage another carrier\u2019s whole customer base, it just doesn\u2019t work that way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure it\u2019s going to be the topic of conversations with some of the parliamentary inquiries, and we\u2019ll be happy to participate and co-operate with that,\u201d Seneviratne said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very different proposition, emergency roaming in a selected area, versus opening up the possibility of having 11 million Optus customers suddenly come into our network. You probably end up having two national outages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Telstra\u2019s executives carry SIM cards of other carriers with them in the event of a Telstra outage, he added. Optus chief Kelly Bayer Rosmarin last week raised eyebrows when she was forced to dial into ABC radio via WhatsApp, given Optus\u2019 networks were down.<\/p>\n

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. <\/i>Sign up to get it every weekday morning<\/i>.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. The unnamed \u201cinternational peering partner\u201d that Optus said had contributed to its 16-hour-long network meltdown last week was its Singaporean parent company Singtel, it can be revealed. The embarrassing revelation comes as it can also be revealed a key executive, who left Canadian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216568,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nIdentity of \u2018third-party\u2019 that brought down Optus network revealed - Best World News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bestwnews.com\/technology\/identity-of-third-party-that-brought-down-optus-network-revealed\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Identity of \u2018third-party\u2019 that brought down Optus network revealed - Best World News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. 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The unnamed \u201cinternational peering partner\u201d that Optus said had contributed to its 16-hour-long network meltdown last week was its Singaporean parent company Singtel, it can be revealed. 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