Tech company Google has shut down around half of the internet service in Japan, because of an accidental error committed while updating IP addresses. The incident suspended online trading, transportation ticketing offices, and more as one of the world’s fastest Internet connection briefly stopped, Tech Times reported.

The disruption lasted for several hours last week, because of a simple error that has affected wide-area connections. The report said that the incident has caused Internet speed to slow down, affecting some Japanese industries.

For instance, riders at the East Japan Railway were not able to use the ticketing systems when purchasing their tickets.

Customers reported the slowing down of NTT Communications, one of the largest telecommunications company in the country. There were applications that experienced network errors, such as the renowned communications app Line, and flea market platform Mercari, Tech Times also noted.

Apologies

Japan-based newspaper The Asahi Shimbun reported that Google has already issued an apology to its customers, blaming operational errors made by their communications equipment. There are looking into the matter through an investigation.

“We set wrong data for the network, and therefore problems happened. We changed the information to the right ones, within just eight minutes. We apologize for the inconvenience,” the tech company’s spokesperson told The Asahi Simbun.

Tech Times revealed that a Google employee accidentally committed an error while making updates on the IP addresses. They were reportedly routed through Google, which was supposed to be taken through Japanese web service providers. As a result, a huge amount of the country’s web traffic was wrongly transmitted to Google by major providers such as Verizon, the article added.

The incident

It all began noontime of August 25, when subscribers of OCN, Japan’s largest Internet connection service reported inability to gain access on the Internet. NTT Communications is the company in-charge of providing these Internet services to more than seven million people, and almost 500,000 organizations in the country, the Japan-based newspaper reported.

Another communications company KDDI Corporation reportedly suffered from Internet connection instability from around 12:24 p.m. on the same day. Technicians were able to restore connection speeds for these networks to normal at around 1 p.m. of August 25.

However, The Asahi Shimbun reported that poor connection went on for several more hours for some other online services. Online trading and brokerage company Rakuten Securities, Inc. noted issues with the website, which lasted until around four in the afternoon that day. The Mercari flea market app and Line suspended its services for an hour and a half, according to the report.