Social media platforms and websites like X, OpenAl’s ChatGPT and Canva were down for users across the world. While connectivity returned for some users for some apps, the complaints against hampered services and obstructions in accessing these sites piled up online. Users were unable to log in, sign up or explore the feed or use paid and premium features.
Downdetector, which checks if a website is unable to load, was reportedly not operational at one point. It turns out the outage was due to inconsistencies at the end of web service provider, Cloudflare, which works with multiple platforms, services and websites.
What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare, which handles a fifth of the internet’s traffic, operates as a layer between websites and internet users. Think of it like a bridge between the user and the website you want to access. As one of the world’s largest networks, it helps websites and apps load quickly and remain online, shielded from traffic surges and cyberattacks.
This is why any inconsistency in Cloudflare can act as a potential single point of failure for millions of users worldwide.
A California-headquartered software company, it handles an average of 81 million HTTP requests per second and serves over 63 million HTTP(S) requests per second on average, including millions of internet properties. It also handles an average of over 42 million DNS (Domain Name System) requests per second, a crucial step in letting the user access a website. This traffic flows through its network, which is present in over 330 cities across more than 120 countries.
It turns out the outage was due to inconsistencies at the end of web service provider, Cloudflare, which works with multiple platforms, services and websites.
What did Cloudflare say?
Cloudflare said it had to temporarily disable certain services for United Kingdom users. “We have made changes that have allowed Cloudflare Access and WARP to recover. Error levels for Access and WARP users have returned to pre-incident rates. We have re-enabled WARP access in London.”
But the first message acknowledging that something was wrong came almost an hour and a half before, which read: “Cloudflare is experiencing an internal service degradation. Some services may be intermittently impacted. We are focused on restoring service. We will update as we are able to remediate. More updates to follow shortly.”
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The company’s shares were down about 5 per cent in premarket trading.
Why did the internet crash?
Cloudflare started its probe into “internal service degradation around 6:40 a.m. ET” and DownDetector showed that reports for an issue with Cloudflare had hit a peak of nearly 5,000.
“We saw a spike in unusual traffic to one of Cloudflare’s services beginning at 11:20 UTC. That caused some traffic passing through Cloudflare’s network to experience errors,” the company said in an emailed statement. “We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors.”
X and ChatGPT-creator OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Last month, tech issues at Amazon Web Services — Jeff Bezos’ cloud service company — left people unable to access thousands of popular websites and apps, including Snapchat and Reddit.
(With inputs from Reuters)
