Millions of .de Domains Unreachable For Hours

An anonymous reader writes "Due to an error on behalf of DENIC, the German DNS registrar for second-level .de domains, millions of .de domains fell over the edge (auf Deutsch) of the Internet today. The cause of this GAU (GröYter anzunehmender Unfall = maximum credible accident) is still unknown, as DENIC officials haven't answered any questions from journalists at the time of writing."

auf Deutsch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me, what is the point of putting a warning aimed at people who don't speak German in German??

Re:auf Deutsch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vielleicht sind sie davon ausgegangen, dass auch dumme Amerikaner können das Wort "Deutsch" und die Bedeutung des Ausdrucks zu schließen.

OH NO!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where will people get their bizarre latex fetish watersports dungeon porn now!?!?!?!!

Re:So...

[sopssa]

It's a single point of failure for the "distributed" internet. Just imagine if this happens to ICANN. Yeah you can still access the IP addresses, but that doesn't really help casual people.

Re:We call that...

[Jesus_666]

Actually, we reserve the term "Super-GAU" for that. "GAU" translates to "most severe expected accident"; it's still something you design your facility to handle. Consequently, a Super-GAU is an accident that exceeds what you planned for. An important point is that nuclear plants are required not to emit any radioactive material even in case of a GAU. Therefore, any accident during which the plant does release radioactive material is a Super-GAU.

Three Mile Island is a good example: Back than it was a Super-GAU as nobody designed reactors to handle gas buildup. With modern reactors it's a regular a GAU since modern designs are required to consider that failure mode and mitigate it.

In short: A GAU is "well, I guess after we're done decontamining and repairing the plant we'll need to do quite a bit of lobbying to get it back online". A Super-GAU is "we just contaminated how much land?".

Re:auf Deutsch?

[xouumalperxe]

so a GAU is a SNAFU?

Re:OH NO!!!

[grimJester]

.jp, obv.