There may have been more disruptions in Asia, however, where the IDC China Telecommunication route would have seemed shorter, but users were definitely affected, Brown said. "We saw routers in Belgium, Indonesia, Portugal, Thailand and the U.S. -- to name a few -- which were selecting these false routes," he said.

Arbor Networks Chief Security Officer Danny McPherson believes that a large number of users were probably affected, even if only for a short time. Worse, the tens of thousands of bad routes may have just been a cover for a single targeted attack, he said.

IDC China Telecommunication could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

Because so many Chinese networks were also disrupted by the incident, security experts believe that it was probably unintentional.

This isn't the first time that bad BGP routes have caused problems on the Internet.