YouTube Suffers Downtime, Pakistan Telecom To Blame?

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1. Ze'ev
   

   February 24th, 2008 at 3:39 pm

   can it really be THAT easy?

2. allen stern
   

   February 24th, 2008 at 3:40 pm

   FYI - I think it was down earlier than that… I had sporadic reports coming in as early as 11:30AM eastern (3 hrs earlier):
   http://www.centernetworks.com/youtube-is-down

   Interesting note about the Pakistani Telecom DNS!

3. dz
   

   February 24th, 2008 at 3:57 pm

   perhaps pakistan telecom wasnt responsible for the outage they are still intent on censoring the internet so people dont see a freaking cartoon. this just helps underline the overall ridiculousness of ALL religions. this happens to regard islam but IMO they are all equally as foolish.

   maybe you dont want people seeing things you deem offensive but dont get in the way of my viewing Rick Astley videos and jon stewart updates.

   ps. i know this isnt the place for a rant like this but im just sick of people breaking shit in the name of religion. especially when they break something that is a tool for the (mostly) free expression of a diverse global community. just relax!

4. Wade M
   

   February 24th, 2008 at 4:04 pm

   This problem isn’t new, it’s how BGP is designed to work. He with the most specific route wins. Look up BGP Sink Hole Routing for an example how it’s used to help with DDoS attacks.

   Looks like Pakistan Telecom doesn’t do BGP Route Filtering…

   What usually happens with most Telcos/BGP Peers these days is filters are placed between the two peers that stop the advertisment of any IP Subnet/Range that falls outside of the pre-determined Subnet/Range.

   –Wade
   http://wadem.id.au

5. Jeffrey
   

   February 24th, 2008 at 4:16 pm

   Wait a minute, what’s going on here…. Techcrunch is reporting the outage was worldwide (which i can verify for the USA… i was having problems today..), but BBC is reporting that the outage is only for Pakistan.. something I’m not getting here?

6. Anonymous
   

   February 24th, 2008 at 4:22 pm

   I believe that Pakistan was taking down youtube inside Pakistan and it ended up taking it down around the world…

7. John
   

   February 24th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7262071.stm explains it. Pakistan alone cannot do it.

8. Mike
   

   February 24th, 2008 at 4:45 pm

   Now it is reported that Geocities has been recently banned in Turkey. Some JBoss error pages are shown for all requests.

   There is no nice way of blocking access to a site when a DNS hack is not enough. IP bans and hijackings are terribly bad, violation of the RFCs and internet ethics.

9. Hendra
   

   February 24th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

   That’s for asking Musharraf to leave office.

10. Planet Lowyat
    

    February 24th, 2008 at 5:26 pm

    Is this happen to Rapidshare.com as well?

11. David Ulevitch
    

    February 24th, 2008 at 5:28 pm

    Its not an allegation, I was watching them leak routes. I’m sure it was an accidental consequence of trying to block only Pakistan.

    Anyways, it really is that easy.

12. From India
    

    February 24th, 2008 at 5:53 pm

    between assassinations, harboring terrorists and hijacking ip addresses this country is multi-talented.

13. Omer
    

    February 24th, 2008 at 6:27 pm

    One of the reasons on I’ve heard from sources in Pakistan on why Pak Telecom attempted the “block” is that there were people using mobile phone cameras to record incidents of voter intimidation and ballot rigging during the recent elections in the country.

    These videos then made it to you tube, and ofcourse when one of the winning parties got wind of it, an order to PTCL was made to shut down youtube..

    not sure if this is completely true, but it certainly makes for a nice spicy story!

14. ryan troy
    

    February 24th, 2008 at 7:51 pm

    Come now….we all know this was a NSA test to determine how quickly they could control “blowback” if a piece of damning footage got out into the public. 2 hours is just enough time to update all the global filters with new video fingerprints.

    http://www.slate.com/id/2172952/entry/2172970/

15. JustADude
    

    February 24th, 2008 at 10:24 pm

    Renesys Blog, the same dudes who had the best real coverage of what happened in the cable break MidEast issue is back with details about the BGP reroute that was done here.

    Not speculation folks, log extractions to document what happened.

    http://www.renesys.com/blog/20.....tube.shtml

16. Shaheer
    

    February 24th, 2008 at 10:55 pm

    I’m in Pakistan. This ban was effective a few days. Apparently, PIE (the PTCL-run backbone) blocked the entire youtube.com domain, whereas TW1 (privately-held, tw1.com) blocked access to one specific video (and the rest of Youtube was open).

    The website that was blocked (as per the PTA memorandum) was the video leading to the Anti-Islamic Dutch movie.

    And not surprisingly, it came from the frontier province, where we have this huge lot of radicalism prevailing.

    Apparently, I’m quite sickened by the comments that sparked on Digg that are against Islam. I just have one thing to say (not just to them, but to everyone): refrain from harassing Islam when you don’t know it. Picking out portions of it and then commenting is like picking out seeds from an orange and comparing it’s taste with an apple, on the whole.

    There were stories that Youtube was blocked due to the rigging videos - I’m not entirely sure whether that was the case, since the video that was instructed to be blocked was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3s8jtvvg00

    I haven’t seen it (since I’m on dialup), but a few that have have described it as disturbing (and they’re not extremists, like the majority of us Pakistanis/Muslims).

    I hope people realize that these suicide bombers don’t have a religion; Islam does not condone in ANY WAY these acts of whatever-you-want-to-call-it.

17. Shaheer
    

    February 24th, 2008 at 11:01 pm

    Btw, the video has now been removed. I have the copy of the memo that was sent. It’s available on the internet (and I lost the link…), but if anyone would like a copy, I can upload it (or mail TechCrunch, if they can get in contact with me) and they could publically release it.

    It’s the memo that was sent from PTA’s Peshawar wing to the ISPs across Peshawar, and ultimately, the country.

18. Harshal Vaidya
    

    February 24th, 2008 at 11:35 pm

    Wow ..Pakistan has internet ?
    Is that allowed in Koran ?;-)

19. Yogi Muranjan
    

    February 24th, 2008 at 11:50 pm

    I am not sure about Koran, but probably in Quran, you dumb ass.

20. Shaheer
    

    February 25th, 2008 at 1:33 am

    Let’s not cuss at each other due to different spelling usage. There’s a reason why Muslims refer to it as the Quran, and not the Koran, but calling names?

    On a humorous note: just about everything, even the television is allowed.

    What’s preached in Islam is the ability to distinguish good from bad, and not act in a radical manner. It’s unfortunate people tend to not follow their religion entirely nowadays (only a select few do).

21. Jawad
    

    February 25th, 2008 at 2:29 am

    Pakistan is the country of scientists, I guess someone’s experiments goes wrong.. But don’t worry neighbours, our cruise missiles or nukes experiment wont be wrong…
    A Foolish Indian wrote: Is that allowed in Koran ?;-) … LOL!!.. Why don’t you ask your own fellow country men.. India has more than 200 million muslims.. Even more than Pakistan. And why don’t you ask your own former president.. President of India is also a muslim.. Also founder/head of indians nuclear / missile stuff..

22. Indian
    

    February 25th, 2008 at 3:26 am

    Shaheer, I’m from India and I appreciate your patience and maturity in dealing with abuse here. These idiots aren’t worth answering.

23. Sam
    

    February 25th, 2008 at 5:34 am

    I find it amazing that we are all basing this story off one announcement by the BBC. Why has no one else corroborated the cause of this? This is a fascinating event as it reveals a number of things:
    - The dominance of You Tube. Why hasn’t a rival emerged?
    - The reliance on the BBC as a trustworthy source of news. (I am sceptical ever since their premature reporting of the collapse of WTC building 7 on September 11)
    - The lack of questioning of this happening so soon after the Internet outage in the Middle East.
    - the vulnerability of a large corporation (You Tube owned by Google) to a decision of a nation state.

    There is more to this than meets the eye.

    My theory is that this was a test of some sort.

24. Ghaus
    

    February 25th, 2008 at 6:49 am

    Sorry for late comment !

    I am working on my own start-up company in Pakistan, and oh yeah i cannot access YouTube. Damn !

    Fact : Pakistan has more than 16 million internet users.

25. David Ulevitch
    

    February 25th, 2008 at 9:04 am

    @Sam (23)

    No there isn’t more to this than meets the eye. And no, it wasn’t a test. There are numerous reasons why that would make no sense.

26. iqbal
    

    February 25th, 2008 at 9:05 am

    Hi
    I don’t understand how Pakistan can do that. They can ban it over here but how can they take control of something which is in USA.

    How can Techcrunch allow this rubbish talk against Islam or Quran.

    Thanks

27. Dev
    

    February 25th, 2008 at 9:13 am

    Pakistan’s ISI must be the one circulating a memo to ban youtube. The same people who support the terrorist and give them training. I don’t blame the people, they are bought up in this situation and they dont have the opportunities that you might find in other better off countries. But it is time they stand up to the ISI and other radical organisations florishing in pakistan. I was shocked to see a picture in a busy market in pakistan and people were openly donating money for the ‘jihad’ cause. So while most muslims are good.. just saying so doesnt make you so.. you should take some positive actions against those muslims that are f*cking up your name!

28. Muneeb
    

    February 26th, 2008 at 3:29 am

    Hi guys !

    Well i just wanna say … Is this post from techcrunch.com for discussing Quran , Muslims, Indians etc ?

    Please its a request to all of you to be on the Topic - don’t go Off topic

    Thanks
    Muneeb

    P.S This is neither a religious nor any political discussion post ….

29. Kashif
    

    February 26th, 2008 at 10:03 am

    Here is a take on the situation from Pakistan’s perspective:

    http://www.chowrangi.com/youtu.....istan.html

30. No Name Girl
    

    February 27th, 2008 at 12:12 am

    Hi Guys! I came across this post by Helloji which brings out the irony and sarcasm on how ‘Pakistan Clogs You Tube’. Must Read-

    http://helloji.wordpress.com/2.....s-youtube/

31. FArrukh
    

    March 2nd, 2008 at 3:21 am

    My problem is that I cannot explain you via my english that how good
    our Army was, is, and will be (Inshallah) But let my try to let you know a few
    things about ever great Pakistani Army. During the President Genral Zia-ul-Haq Late
    Pakistan Army support to our Afghani brothers when USSR (Russia) attack on Afghanistan.
    It was imposibale to fight against World`s most strong army. But (Allhadulilla) Pakistan Army and
    Mujahidin push them back to Russia. There was also a time when USA army get traning in Pakistan
    in 1980`s. Lots of USA troops came to Pakistan for their traning.
    Israel twice planed to destroy Pakistani Nuclear plan in 80`s with help of India. But our
    great Air Force never let them do it. All the credit goes to Pakistan Air Force in that time. Today
    we suffring a lot terrorisam in our own country. We also defending our country against a another
    huge power land India. Remeber that India is much stronger than Pakistan in their army, But they never
    dare to have a war against Pakistan, because they well know what happened in 1965 and also that even
    don`t have so much sores but our great Army always did their great job whenever we nedded them. I hope that
    you got maybe answer of your question. Pakistan Army is one of the greatest army in the world. I salut Pakistan Army.

32. FArrukh
    

    March 2nd, 2008 at 3:22 am

    dear ! Inda beat us in 1997, 1965 , 1971 there all war was gone in idia favour only 1998 war we win but not at all , and what u say our brave air force (ha ha ha ha ), AFSOOOS YAAAR

    you detmined that india had ocupied azad kashmir and other parts of sind, yaaar waht abou sialkot and lahore in 1965, but now we r going to discuss abt pak army not going to solve the palestine issue if isreal is supporter of indai then what is china, leave it yaaar u think as whole not only about enimeis yaar

    andf u say abt indian channels what musharaf said in his intewiew which progran you dont like leave that many films made by indai against pakistan but some of them are also famous in pakistan

33. godzilla
    

    March 21st, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    YOUTUBE IS BACK!!!!

    I JUST CHECKED AND IT WAS THERE!!!