WHAT HAPPENED: AT&T, at the time the leading supplier of frame relay networks, turned in one of the most catastrophic ISP whoops-a-daisies of all time when their frame relay network took a dive on April 13th, 1998 and stayed down for nearly 26 hours. This left more than 6,000 customers in the dark, mostly institutions like banks, retailers, and manufacturers.

It seems that some bad code got uploaded to a Cisco switch, which caused a data storm that raged across the entire network and shut down all 145 of the switches connected. The problem switch wasn’t at a customer location, but was connected to the network, and managed to take the whole system down.

Based on the enterprise-level client base of AT&T’s frame relay network, this screw-up deserves the title of Greatest Hosting Disaster of All Time.

SOURCE: FindArticles.com
COST: $60,000,000 ($10,000 average loss per customer)
REPUTATION DAMAGE: High
OTHER FACTORS: Also ruined a developer’s career.
TOTAL DAMAGE: 10/10

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