On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 12:57 AM, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux(a)free.fr> wrote:
It is actually true that some ISP have mistakenly
blocked all accesses
to Wikimedia sites.
We have received a complaint to that effect on OTRS, from a ISP
technician. It seems that their upstream provider screwed up their
redirection hacks (using BGP) and mistakenly propagated them to its clients.
I was aware of that. I didn't consider it the same.
For those unaware of how this works: The participating ISPs
re-announce one of Wikimedia's IPs in their own networks in order to
hijack all the connections. Normally these reannouncments are not
distributed outside of the providers network. But mistakes can be
made. This is how, a few months ago, Pakistan managed to knock youtube
off the internet.
A single configuration glitch from one of these blocking ISPs may have
the same effect.