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Darren Waters

Is YouTube down?

  • Darren Waters
  • 24 Feb 08, 19:54 GMT

A few friends have alerted me to a possible outage at YouTube. I certainly can't get on to the service.
youtube.jpg

According to some, YouTube has been down for more than an hour....

I'll be keeping an eye on it from my Twitter account. Follow me here.

I've been using Tweetscan to look for people's comments about YouTube on Twitter. A very cool web app. Look here.

Lots of people on Twitter are linking Pakistan's decision to block YouTube with the current - seemingly global - outage. I'd be surprised if there was a link as the net doesn't work that way...

UPDATE: I've contacted a Google PR in London who says the service is working for him but is checking on the issue. There are mixed reports - some are saying it is back, others not.

UPDATE TWO: David Ulevitch of OpenDNS believes that "Pakistan Telecom has decided to (accidentally probably) hijack their IP address space".

UPDATE THREE: I'm just writing a news story on this. Looks like Pakistan's attempts to hijack the YouTube IP addresses internally led to ISPs blocking the site globally.

Comments   Post your comment

  • 1.
  • At 08:51 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • jane costeel wrote:

Youtube has been down for at least 40 minutes (my isp is located in Pennsylvania in the U.S.)

  • 2.
  • At 08:53 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • Sharon wrote:

1435 hrs
Central Standard Time
24 Feb 2008
Crystal Lake, IL

Yes it seems to be down....unable to access for approximately past 45 minutes -- as long as I've been trying today...
:(

  • 3.
  • At 08:54 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • Charlotte Miller wrote:

HI .. Ye Its Down On Mine =[ I Cant Listen To Music Now =[ .. Do Any One Know Why Its Down ?

Here on Canada's west coast, YouTube has been inaccessible for the past couple of hours at least.

There's all sorts of rumours - any actual hard news on what's happening?

  • 5.
  • At 08:56 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • Chris B wrote:

Page Not Loading for me here over in London UK..

Indeed You Tube does seem to be down tonight (Sunday) and we as fans here at WorldTV do hope its back up soon!

  • 7.
  • At 08:58 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • Chris B wrote:

Page Not Loading for me here over in London UK..

  • 8.
  • At 09:00 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • Steve wrote:

I can confirm that YouTube.com has been down for close to hour and a half from Western Canada.

I don't know if it is related, But a couple of forums I frequent are also unreachable.
I think one of the forums is hosted in California.

  • 9.
  • At 09:01 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • sulz wrote:

i seem to have the same problem.
i cant access it either, iv been trying a couple of times, but i get the same response!

  • 10.
  • At 09:02 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • jj wrote:

tis not

  • 11.
  • At 09:03 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • Toby Kieth wrote:

Youtube is down in Nevada USA. Time now is 12:50 PM

  • 12.
  • At 09:03 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • boris wrote:

I am in San Francisco. Youtube down here.

  • 13.
  • At 09:04 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • Ada wrote:

Yup,

it's down here in Massachusetts USA.

Youtube is down because Pakistan Telecom is poisoning the route, and distributing it to the world. It'll be interesting how the network admins around the world deal with this. Pakistan may end up being blackholed.

  • 15.
  • At 09:04 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • Not Provided wrote:

Pakistan Telecom are announcing the /24 address block that contains YouTube's servers. This means that all traffic for YouTube is being sent to Pakistan Telecom, who are then just dropping the traffic. This sort of thing is supposed to be prevented by ISPs filtering the routes they receive from their customers however PCCW (Pakistan Telecom's upstream) are blindly accepting the duff route and passing it on to other ISPs. Some providers are starting to filter out the bad announcement, but it'll probably be another few hours until the problem is completely resolved.

This happens on a reasonably regular basis, but not often to a site as high profile as YouTube. Often it's done by spam operations wanting to hijack networks belonging to well known (and whitelisted) email providers.

  • 16.
  • At 09:06 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • Ben Mitchell wrote:

It is down for me here in the US (Minneapolis, MN).

  • 17.
  • At 09:08 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • Jeff White wrote:

A Ziff Davis net blog says the outage has to do with Pakistan's ban:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=547

  • 18.
  • At 09:09 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • Den wrote:

YouTube is definately down for me... 12:50 PM Pacific time...

  • 19.
  • At 09:10 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • boris wrote:

I am in San Francisco. Youtube down here.

  • 20.
  • At 09:10 PM on 24 Feb 2008,
  • David wrote:

I've been trying in Australia for a while now, no luck. But ssms to be working now. Bummer about Pakistan being blocked. Governments have to realise that a lot of people enjoy this kind of thing and if you're offended by something then don't view it. How come it's always the complainers that get their way.

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