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Case Study #285 — 300 Software Failure Case Studies

Time Warner Cable nationwide internet outage

Time Warner Cable customers across the US lost internet access for hours in one of the largest single-provider outages of its kind at the time.

2014-08-27
When it happened
Telecommunications
Sector
#285 of 300
Ranked by documented impact
01 — What Happened

The damage was public. The root cause was preventable.

Time Warner Cable customers across the US lost internet access for hours in one of the largest single-provider outages of its kind at the time.

Telecommunications
Sector affected
2014-08-27
Date of the event
#285
Rank in the 300 Software Failure Case Studies
1
Distinct root-cause clause identified below
02 — The Root Cause

What the software actually got wrong

The company said a routine network-management change caused an issue with its 'global routing table,' the data core network routers use to direct traffic, overwhelming its routers and taking large portions of its network offline until the change could be reversed.

01Root Cause

The company said a routine network-management change caused an...

What Happened

The company said a routine network-management change caused an issue with its 'global routing table,' the data core network routers use to direct traffic, overwhelming its routers and taking large portions of its network offline until the change could be reversed.

How Requs AI Catches This

Requs AI Edge Case flags this exact pattern at the requirements and architecture stage — before a single line of code implementing it exists — so the assumption behind it gets challenged while it is still cheap to fix.

03 — How This Gets Caught Before It Happens

Beyond code coverage and "shall" testing

Root causes like this one rarely show up in code coverage or requirements-compliance testing, because nobody wrote a requirement anticipating the specific edge case that broke. Requs AI Edge Case and Requs AI Software FMEA are built to surface exactly this class of overlooked failure mode — before the software is written.

Requs AI Edge Case

Surfaces this before code exists

Identifies edge cases like this one at requirements and architecture time, using the Common Defect Enumeration to catalog failure patterns seen across hundreds of real-world software failures — including this one.

Requs AI Software FMEA

Connects the failure mode to the hazard

Traces this class of root cause directly to the system-level hazard it can produce, so a defect pattern like this one gets flagged during design review instead of after it ships.

Find the overlooked root causes before they ship.

Schedule a demonstration, or explore how Requs AI Edge Case and Software FMEA use the Common Defect Enumeration.