On January 21, at around 15:20, China’s entire top-level domain name root servers (DNS) malfunctioned, leaving two-thirds of China’s websites inaccessible and “causing severe damage to China’s Internet.”
Internet users found themselves re-directed to IP 65.49.2.178 [a U.S. website]. The malfunction lasted until 18:30 when visits to most of the .com websites had been restored.
The state-run China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) earlier said in a microblog post that the incident was due to a malfunction in China’s top-level domain name root servers and that the incident had no impact on .cn which functioned properly throughout the incident.
Sources:
Nanfang Daily, January 22, 2014
http://epaper.nfdaily.cn/html/2014-01/22/content_7269197.htm
Xinhua, January 22, 2014
http://news.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2014-01/22/c_119082541.htm