NEW YORK: Cloudflare, a content delivery network (CDN) and domain name server (DNS) service, said on Tuesday that it had implemented a fix and that the issue was now resolved following a global outage that affected access to web services worldwide
“A fix has been implemented and we believe the incident is now resolved. We are continuing to monitor for errors to ensure all services are back to normal,” said an update from the CDN, whose network handles around a fifth of web traffic, posted at 7:42pm.
It later said that some customers may be still experiencing issues logging into or using the Cloudflare dashboard. “We are working on a fix to resolve this, and continuing to monitor for any further issues,” it added.
The incident marked the latest hit to major online services. An outage of Amazon’s cloud service last month caused global turmoil as thousands of popular websites and apps, including Snapchat and Reddit, were inaccessible due to the disruption.
Cloudflare — whose shares were down about five per cent in premarket trading — runs one of the world’s largest networks that helps websites and apps load faster and stay online by protecting them from traffic surges and cyberattacks.
Earlier today, disruptions in internet access were widely reported as Cloudflare reported experiencing issues in its global network.
In an update on the situation posted at 6:09pm, it said: “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. We are continuing to work towards restoring other services.”
It later said it was continuing to work on restoring service for application services customers.
Earlier, the service provider said it was “aware of and investigating an issue” that was impacting multiple customers with widespread 500 errors, along with the Cloudflare dashboard and API application programming interface also failing.
NetBlocks, a global internet watchdog, also said that a wide range of online services were experiencing disruptions due to a technical issue affecting Cloudflare’s global network. It added that the incident was not related to “country-level internet disruptions or filtering”.
Downdetector showed that user reports from Pakistan indicated problems with Cloudflare, with complaints beginning around 4:10 pm. Problems were also reported with OpenAI, Amazon Web Services and Facebook.
Social media platform X was also down for thousands of users in the United States and worldwide, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
There were more than 11,500 reports of issues with the social media platform as of 6:41am ET, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources.
It was not immediately clear whether the outages were related.
X and Cloudflare did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said it was monitoring the global outage and was in contact with global platforms and local operators. It added that it would continue to observe the situation until services were fully restored.
Cloudflare had also reported a “widespread outage” in June 2022 and several popular websites were unreachable.
A DNS server is an address book that matches a website’s name (e.g. http://google.com) to its real IP (a set of numbers). For nationwide use, you need DNS servers that can handle a lot of traffic and respond fast.
I appreciate the real-world examples you included — they made the concept click.