Facebook finally revealed the cause of the collapse of a number of their services, such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and of course Facebook.
They did not clearly explain the cause of their service failure, but what is clear is that their service crashed after the regular update of the border gateway protocol (BGP).
This BGP update is considered to be the root cause of the problem, i.e. it removes all existing domain name system (DNS) routing information. As a result, all Facebook services cannot be accessed.
So, what is this BGP and DNS?
First is BGP, which is the world's internet traffic controller. That is, regulate what flow or packet is sent to where, with the shortest path so that data packets can arrive faster.
BGP is needed because in the world there are many internet service providers, backbone routers, and servers. So BGP is in charge of showing the way for data packets, and making sure the route is the best route.
Then what is the relationship between BGP and DNS? Briefly, borrowing an explanation from Cloudflare, DNS serves to explain the purpose of a data, and BGP aims to set the route that needs to be taken to reach its destination.
DNS is a technology that allows computers (and various devices connected to the internet) to understand the IP address of a website or other things on the internet. But its function is limited to that, knowing the address of the destination.
That's why BGP is needed to direct the packet to its destination. This is what happened in the downfall of Facebook and its various services for several hours, because BGP could not direct packets to their destination, so users could not get packets from Facebook et al.
The BGP and DNS issues are also considered to be the cause of the downfall of Facebook et al in March 2019.
