#dns errors

A week ago AWS suffered a major outage caused by a DNS error, leaving numerous services and apps inaccessible for hours on a global scale. In my report on it, I stated that corporate monoculture is going to become a greater issue, since only a handful of tech giants wield the vast majority of the power in how the internet’s functionality is handled. Yesterday, I was proved correct.

Around noon EST, Azure Front Door, Microsoft’s cloud content delivery network, went down. And stayed down until the configuration change that caused the outage was reverted, some 8 hours later. (Which strikes me as technospeak for ‘restored to a previous version’, a rather concerning happenstance in and of itself, that a flaw can be so catastrophic that there’s nothing else to do but undo an entire update.) Those downtime hours were a whole business day, and the disruption of services was as far reaching as healthcare and airlines, XBOX games, as well as nearly all of Microsoft products. I myself could not access Minecraft on PC and that’s how I discovered there was an issue in the first place. My first stop upon being unable to login was to check the downdetector. Fully half of the services listed on the main page were affected. Some outage spikes were brief, but most were still ongoing at the time I checked (a little after 2 pm).

We talk about client trust and how it can be lost. Reddit’s having a field day with this, following so closely to the AWS outage. There is a tone of exasperated ridicule in the reaction. A sidelong smirk and nudging elbow of ‘of course it’s a DNS error’. A sense of inevitability because all the eggs are in one basket that is being increasingly carried by AI. Comments range from jokes referencing ‘The IT Crowd’ to accidentally unplugging the internet because they tripped over it or had to vacuum.

I titled my report on the AWS outage ‘Glass Cannons’ for a reason. Sure, these tech giants are powerful and have integrated themselves into products and services that have nothing to do with their base operations, allowing them to profit hand over fist. But they are fragile. A DNS error should not take down half the internet, for crying out loud. This is a stark example of why diversification of the infrastructure is essential. One comment I read this morning posed the question to the effect of imagine that this was a malicious attack, and what would the fallout be? That’s terrifying.

They say disasters come in threes, so who will be next? Who’s left to be next? And what will it take to break through the idea that infinite growth is sustainable when it comes at the expense of fundamental security and infrastructure? I’m just an analyst, I don’t have the means to create a solution to the problem. But I can recognize the pattern. Cloud computing is a great way to do business, but it needs a literal spreading of the wealth. After all, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

One can hardly navigate the world these days without the internet. From shopping to paying bills, social media to remote work, it’s unthinkable to be without it. That’s a lot of traffic. So when something like Amazon Web Services goes down, it’s a significant problem which can lead to widespread outages across multiple layers of the web, and the goods and services utilized every moment of the day. And yesterday, that’s exactly what happened.

Every location in digital space has a unique identifier, its IP address. But unless you’re like me, who deciphers them for a living, the average user doesn’t see that backbone. They see their browser, a website, streaming service, game app, etc. The reason for that is Domain Name System (DNS) protocols. DNS translates the numerical value of an IP address into the user facing website, app or service. It’s a pretty straightforward, one to one translation between provider and client.

So what happened?

There are billions of IP addresses out there. And all of that data must be stored and organized somewhere in order for anything to move online in a timely manner. AWS uses a database service that is designed to handle the performance of such storage and organization – DynamoDB. In the words of Mike Chapple, quoted in PBS’s article on the outage, it’s ‘one of the record-keepers of the modern internet’. And in the case of this particular outage, the issue wasn’t that the data was missing, it was that DynamoDB ‘lost’ its ability to communicate where it was with the DNS. Without the provider to client translation, traffic could not connect with its destination.

AWS was back up and running within a few hours. And while many services and sites were disrupted, ultimately no damage was done in terms of vulnerability or leaked data. And to be honest, the outage itself isn’t really my point in this report. DNS errors are common, often simply because of the sheer volume of requests. Anywhere between 60-90% of pings do not connect from host to client (source: every pcap I’ve ever looked at in Kibana). In my work, it’s often the first thing I filter out, just so I can feasibly see what did. My point is highlighting the danger of corporate monoculture.

Amazon is a powerful entity, and that’s putting it rather mildly. AWS hosts cloud computing infrastructure to government departments, businesses, universities, gaming platforms, social media sites and even things like McDonald’s online ordering app. But as large and powerful as AWS is, it’s also fragile. A single error in a single hub affected 64 internal services, which rippled outward to affect millions of users globally.

In biology, too much genetic similarity results in a slow decline towards extinction. A single disaster can wipe out a species because there aren’t enough to survive and adapt, especially if their core population is all in the same place.

Obviously, the internet isn’t a biological creature, but it is a microcosm of evolution in real time. Just 25 years ago – a single generation – the internet as it exists today was still a concept in the earliest stages of development. 50 years ago, it didn’t exist at all. 24 hour, global connectivity is young. And the problem we have with it currently is a lack of diversity in terms of how and where data is stored and backed up, and how and where that data is communicated between devices. A mere handful of tech companies like Amazon hold the majority of the power over the web’s operations and functions. It would not take much to create a global digital disaster, and we should be looking at ways to spread the logistics of keeping the internet actually running a little (a lot) more evenly.

Are you facing difficulties to view a webpage? The internet connection is unable to display your preferred web page and the message page cannot continue displayed is flashing on your screen? All these are because as for DNS error. In this article we free choice discuss how to sort out DNS errors.<\p>

Are you new to the domain of computer and dont know what DNS stands for. Well, this refers to Domain Name Grain. This is so assign numerical values ultramodern machine-friendly code to alphanumeric values typed in bye-bye users. Simply speaking, the job of a chieftainry name device is on convert a human-user pleasantly computer hardware host name into an IP address. This routes the users computer to the right labyrinth as well as the webpage on the Internet.<\p>

Lets take a closer look at how to print DNS errors. Based on the fiber in regard to leading question your Internet connection indicates ego need to fix it. If my humble self enter into possession a DNS error acknowledgment saying cannot find server message, this means your PC is unable to locate the webpage you requested for. There are various reasons that can achieve this moot point. May be the case your Internet connection is down honor point may be you havent typed the domain social lion of the website properly. To fix the issue other self give the gate get in touch with a computer services house. Given below are some utilitarian tips on route to fix DNS errors.<\p>

The supreme thing himself be necessary do is to check whether the cables that are connected to the router, modem and your PC are properly twenty-four-hour or not. In many cases, a loosened cable causes all this mischief. Just connect everything properly and reset the connection properly. And recently flagellate off and disconnect the router and reconnect and branchedness it on again.<\p>

Them should also release and renew IP addresses. To engineer this task, enterprise to Start menu and crump on Run. Open door the dialog box area in cmd and check out the IP address vier. Now type in ipconfig \release fellow feeling the command prompt window and knock down ENTER. You need to wait a minute for more moments and all the lines effect appear automatically and the cursor flashes. Type in ipconfig \renew, and press ENTER and docked the porthole.<\p>