Network meltdown definition
A network meltdown is a severe disruption of network services by a dramatic slowdown or complete halt of its traffic. It happens when a network becomes overwhelmed with excessive data or malicious traffic, leading to a breakdown in normal operations. Network meltdowns can be caused by misconfigurations, hardware failures, or deliberate cyber attacks.
See also: DDoS mitigation, Packet loss, Network security architecture
How network meltdowns happen
Accidental or deliberate, network meltdowns usually follow a similar pattern:
- 1.The network is flooded by an unusually high volume of traffic. This traffic can be legitimate, like a surge in user activity during a massive sale campaign, or malicious, like a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. In a DDoS attack, numerous compromised systems flood the target network with traffic, overwhelming it completely.
- 2.As the excessive traffic flows through the network, routers, switches, and other networking devices struggle to handle the load. The devices reach their limits, causing significant delays in processing data packets.
- 3.Under heavy load, the network begins to drop some of the packets. This, together with increased delays in data transmission, result in poor performance, disrupting communication between devices and applications.
- 4.Critical services, like email, web applications, and internal communications, experience slowdowns or become completely unavailable. It severely affects business operations, productivity, and user experience.
- 5.The sustained high traffic can lead to hardware failures or software crashes. Overloaded network devices may malfunction or shut down, worsening the problem.
- 6.During a network meltdown, security monitoring and defenses also become less effective. Attackers can exploit the chaos to launch additional attacks or move within the network, causing further damage.
