Communications of the ACM
Facebook's Daylong Malfunction Is Reminder of Internet's Fragility
Facebook says a "server configuration change" had a cascading effect throughout the company's network, triggering a recurrent loop of problems that caused a day-long service interruption.
Credit: nakedsecurity.sophos.com
Facebook said it has corrected a technical error that caused a nearly 24-hour-long service interruption for Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and other Facebook properties this week.
According to a Facebook spokesperson, a "server configuration change" had a cascading effect throughout the company's network, triggering a recurrent loop of problems that kept escalating.
The incident serves as a reminder that the Internet can still be hobbled by human error.
For years, Facebook has recruited engineers on the idea that, within weeks, they can release computer code that reaches billions of people, especially as the company devises a strategy to consolidate the infrastructure of its "family of apps."
However, the outage demonstrated that the more tightly intertwined a network becomes, the more likely a small technical problem caused by a single employee can have far-reaching consequences.
From The New York Times
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