BBC: Pakistan's attempts to block access to YouTube has been blamed for an almost global blackout of the video website for more than an hour on Sunday.
BBC News has learned that the outage was almost certainly connected to Pakistan Telecom and Asian internet service provider PCCW.
A leading net professional said the global outage was "probably a mistake".
Pakistan ordered internet service providers to block the site because of content deemed offensive to Islam.
The BBC News website's technology editor, Darren Waters, says that to block Pakistan's citizens from accessing YouTube it is believed Pakistan Telecom "hijacked" the web server address of the popular video site.
Those details were then passed on to the country's internet service providers so that anyone in Pakistan attempting to go to YouTube was instead re-directed to a different address.
But the details of the "hijack" were leaked out into the wider internet from PCCW and as a result YouTube was mistakenly blocked by internet service providers around the word [sic][.] Pakistan 'sparks YouTube outage' >>>
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
