Not saying this is anything, but maybe someone else on here will see this and have a lightbulb moment...
All 3 DNS records for Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram were updated on Sep 22.
https://whois.domaintools.com/facebook.com
https://whois.domaintools.com/whatsapp.com
https://whois.domaintools.com/instagram.com
I also noticed the same date on the other domains:
https://whois.domaintools.com/whatsapp.net
https://whois.domaintools.com/facebook.net
I am sure there are others. This could be just a simple Zuckerberg and Co. had something they changed/updated on that date for the entire FB empire, but I find a massive outage a few days (12) later to be really strange.
I do not have a whois premium account so I am unable to dig much further than this. Anything interesting happen on Sep 22?
Could the techy pedes break down all this techy lingo?
Facebook has an ASN. Think of this as a big network of computers, for which Facebook defines the routing policy (how traffic has to jump from router to router to reach the destination machine). But their network also has to talk to outside networks, called peers. For updating routing information with the peers, they use a standard protocol, BGP. It's an automatic system which allows Facebook admins to propagate routing information to their peers. So when they change routing on their network, BGP tells their neighbors about it.
What happened was that shortly before the blackout, Facebook sent a lot of BGP "withdrawal" messages which basically told the peers that the computers in their ASN are not there anymore. The peers complied and deleted the routing information.
The result is now that no one on the internet knows how to route to any of Facebooks addresses anymore. This includes ALL of Facebooks network. Internal communication systems, Keycard access to server rooms, ability to remotely change routing configuration: All gone.
They now have to break into their datacenters and plug cables into routers.
Dang! This is helpful too!! So does this mean Facebook is all gone now? Will people’s profiles be restored or will Facebook essentially have to start over?
All the data is still there. Just no way to access it right now. They "just" have to restore the routing information with the peers, and it should be back to normal. If they still have the data to restore, that is.
It's strange that it takes them so long though.
edit and, it's back!