Most of the world’s Internet users lost access to YouTube for several hours last week after an attempt by Pakistani government to block access domestically affected other countries.
An Internet expert said last week’s problems came after a Pakistani telecommunications company complied with the block by directing requests for YouTube videos to a “black hole.” So instead of serving up videos of skateboarding dogs, it sent the traffic into oblivion.
The problem was that the company also accidentally identified itself to Internet computers as the world’s fastest route to YouTube, leading requests from across the Internet to the black hole.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority had ordered 70 Internet service providers to block access to YouTube.com because of anti-Islamic movies on the video-sharing site, which is owned by Google Inc.
