Two HPE Juniper network routers grounded all the US flights on Friday
The FAA determined that a rogue feature in two newly installed routers are to blame for the communications glitches that caused the nationwide ground stop.
On Friday night, a nationwide ground stop affected U.S. air travel after the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) intervened due to network issues. Newly installed Juniper routers from HP Enterprise were found to be causing the problem. The routers began transmitting a high volume of data across the FAA communications network, overwhelming an outdated system.
FAA technology chief Rebecca Guy revealed that two locations, an Arkansas radio site and a Texas radar site, were sending data in bursts every four to five seconds. Despite the issue not affecting safety services like TCAS, the inability of air traffic control and pilots to communicate led to coordination difficulties among thousands of aircraft in the air.
This resulted in a nationwide ground stop order, which has only been used twice before. The first was during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and the second on January 11, 2023, when the NOTAM system experienced an outage. The root cause was a specific feature on the Juniper routers, which was turned off, restoring communications.
Despite the issue being resolved, airlines faced significant challenges, and it's estimated that passengers faced waits of hours to a couple of days before their journeys resumed.
Written by urgent.news from Tom's Hardware's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
