The problem was known well before that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS_7007_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS_7007_incident > The AS 7007 incident w

The problem was known well before that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS_7007_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS_7007_incident > The AS 7007 incident was a major disruption of the Internet on April 25, 1997, that started with a router operated by autonomous system 7007 (MAI Network Services, although sometimes incorrectly attributed to the Florida Internet Exchange[1]) accidentally leaking a substantial part of its entire route table to the Internet, creating a routing black hole. And that's just one specific example I can think of off the top of my head which is older than the one you mentioned. I'm sure there were a number of them before and since.