The source was isolated within 60 minutes of the problem.
The routes propagated for greater than 120 minutes after that without the source contributing. (yes, the routes with an originating AS path of 7007)
This is the interesting problem that noone seems to focus on.
This has happened before. I had a problem with routes incorrectly being advertised by another ISP(GI/MIDNET). The problem was quickly identified, and corrected. An old set of filters created by an engineer that had left the company was incorrectly configured. However this ISP had transit from Sprint. A Sprint router a couple of hops away kept advertising the bogus routes for two days before I could finally get someone in Sprint to believe a problem existed, and shoot the router. Why it took two days is a story in itself.
We did not expect it to hurt for 3 hours. It should have stopped earlier. Why it didn't is the only interesting question left.
Perhaps if you had shared the information more widely, someone who had seen a similar problem before could have helped. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation