BBC Online crashes after major network incident

BBC Online services out of action for one hour...

BBC Online went offline for one hour on Tuesday due to multiple router failuresPhoto: pixelbully

The whole of BBC Online went down for one hour on Tuesday 29 March, preventing users from accessing popular sites such as BBC iPlayer and BBC News.

The outage was caused by a "major network incident", according to a blog post written by Richard Cooper, controller of the BBC's digital distribution.

Cooper said although the BBC Online systems are designed to make such an outage unlikely, the system "suffered multiple failures, with the result that the whole site went down".

Steve Herrmann, editor of the BBC News website, also wrote a blog entry about the incident. "It appears the websites went offline when some of the essential equipment that we use to direct people to the site - known as routers - failed. These routers not only act as the main funnel for all traffic coming into the site but also 'broadcast' the location of BBC Online so that it can be 'found' on the internet," he wrote.

Herrmann added that back-up equipment, which had been designed to kick in to prevent the website from failing, had also failed, causing the whole of BBC Online to become unavailable.

According to Cooper, BBC Online services were mostly back online just over an hour after the failure occurred. Full services were resumed by early Wednesday 30 March.