Facebook says service disruption caused by configuration changes on backbone routers

Facebook has said that the disruption of its operation was caused by configuration changes on backbone routers. All these messaging platforms have started to come back online after being down for more than six hours in a major outage.

Washington (US): Facebook has said that the disruption of its operation was caused by configuration changes on backbone routers. Facebook, in a statement, said its service is now back online. "Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt," the engineers said in a statement on Facebook's website.

"Our services are now back online and we're actively working to fully return them to regular operations. We want to make clear at this time we believe the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change," the statement said.

Apologising for the disruption in the services of Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram, tech giant's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that services are returning online on Tuesday. "Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger are coming back online now," Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg's post on Facebook after a nearly six- hour outage on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

"Sorry for the disruption today -- I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about," he said. Taking to Twitter early on Tuesday, WhatsApp said: "Apologies to everyone who hasn't been able to use WhatsApp today. We're starting to slowly and carefully get WhatsApp working again. Thank you so much for your patience. We will continue to keep you updated when we have more information to share."

Users started reporting that Instagram, WhatsApp and other services under the Facebook corporate umbrella are now accessible as normal for the first time since about 11:30 EST on Monday when reports of the outage and disrupted services began pouring in, according to Sputnik. Earlier, a site that monitors reports of outages across the internet, Downdetector, said the Facebook service outage is the largest it has ever seen.

The company said in a post on Monday, "The largest outage we've ever seen on Downdetector with over 10.6 million problem reports from all over the globe." The US-led the world in the number of reports for disrupted service of more than 1.7 million, followed by Germany at 1.3 million reports and the Netherlands at 9,15,000 reports.

Monday's outage has left several services under the Facebook corporate umbrella, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, inaccessible. Meanwhile, Telegram said on Twitter that users of its messenger in some regions, amid large-scale outages on Facebook, may experience problems loading chats and receiving notifications, It said the company apologises for the inconvenience.

ANI