Optus says outage caused by routine software update
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The news: Optus has revealed last week's outage that left millions of Australians without phone or internet access was caused by a routine software update.
The numbers: Last Wednesday's 12-hour outage left 10 million retail and business customers unable to make calls or undertake transactions.
What they said: "At around 4.05am Wednesday morning, the Optus network received changes to routing information from an international peering network following a routine software upgrade," Optus said.
"These routing information changes propagated through multiple layers in our network and exceeded preset safety levels on key routers which could not handle these.
"This resulted in those routers disconnecting from the Optus IP Core network to protect themselves."
The context: Some of the routers needed to be physically rebooted, Optus said, which required on-site technicians in locations across the nation. Optus said changes had been made to prevent the issue from reoccurring, and that the company would cooperate with any government or Senate reviews. Last week, Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said the outage was too complicated to explain and a detailed statement would be required.
The source: AAP
