On Tuesday, August 12th, 2014, Internet speed and access to some sites was severely slowed, affecting not just UMKC, but Internet Service Providers across the globe. An article published on zdnet.com described the problems in this way: “…Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing tables have grown too large for some top-level Internet routers to handle. The result was that these routers could no longer properly handle Internet traffic.”
The same article quotes Dutch Internet expert Teun Vink as saying, “Some old hardware and software can’t handle [512K routes] and either crash or ignore newly learned routes. So this may cause some disturbances in the Force.”
A fix was applied to the UMKC network yesterday, but Internet users can expect more hiccups until other ISPs replace or upgrade their own affected equipment.