DoS attack blamed for Asia Online outages

A reported denial of service attack on a key Asia Online gateway router marked a bad day for internet connectivity yesterday.

The router problem severely hampered access to IDGNet until mid-afternoon yesterday and affected other Asia Online customers such as New Zealand Post and the Ministry of Health.

Local chief Kevin Francis did not return a call for comment yesterday, but an IDG staff member was told late yesterday that that the problem, which followed the router reporting itself out of resources, was the result of denial of service attacks that have gone on since Sunday.

The attack isn't Asia Online's only problem at present. Until such time as Telecom deigns to directly peer with Asia Online at the Auckland Peering Exchange in the Sky Tower, customers who collect via Telecom Global Gateway are routed through Sydney in order to reach the resources of Asia Online customers. Telecom's own ISP Xtra, however, has its own direct peering link. Senior network engineer Tony Wicks also left Asia Online last week.

Auckland customers of Telecom's JetStream service had their problems yesterday too. Around 6am an ATM card on Telecom's IPNet network failed, preventing many JetStream customers from authenticating.

An hour later "routine upgrades" to the Glenfield and Papatoetoe RANs went awry, causing many customers to lose JetStream service until mid-morning. Among the locations hit was this year Computerworld Expo at the Exhibition Centre in Greenlane.