"When Atrato briefly returned as a provider at 06:49 UTC, VolumeDrive passed them nearly all the routes it learned from Cogent. Evidently Atrato did not have the circuit breaker on the quantity of routes it would accept from VolumeDrive (MAXPREF), because it in turn announced these routes to the rest of the world."
Presumably Atrato's upstreams could also have been configured to disregard unreasonable announcements?
VolumeDrive - what a surprise. They're a disgrace in the hosting world and I strongly advise anyone against using their services (they don't pay their bills for DC space, equipment, etc, http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1296858).
Which, if you worry about these things, is on your mind nowadays.