Get you up to speed: Parts of the internet go down after major network outage | News Tech
Thousands of users experienced internet outages affecting various websites, including NHS England and social media platforms, around 3pm on Monday. Cloudflare is investigating a fibre cut in Eastern North America, which has caused some sites reliant on the Zayo network to become temporarily unreachable.
Cloudflare is currently investigating a fibre cut in Eastern North America, which has led to increased latencies and timeouts for users connecting through North America or accessing services in Europe. Engineers must locate the break and deploy repair crews to restore normal service, but no timeline for the completion of repairs has been provided.
Cloudflare is currently investigating a fibre cut in Eastern North America, which has led to increased latencies and timeouts for users. As a precaution, Web3 Antivirus has warned users to be cautious of potential phishing pages and malicious downloads during this disruption.
What remains unclear — It is not confirmed how many users were affected by the outages across various platforms.
Parts of the internet experience outages following Cloudflare network issue
Dozens of websites have been affected after the Cloudflare issue (Picture by Cheng Xin/Getty Images)
Thousands of people reported the internet crashing after triggering a flood of complaints.
Users of sites like NHS England and X and internet providers like Sky, EE and Three all saw issues skyrocket at around 3pm on Monday.
Cloudflare, a San Francisco-based company, said they are investigating damage to an internet cable in North America. But it is believed to be unrelated to the rest of the outages experienced globally.
A spokesperson told WTX: ‘We don’t see any Cloudflare global outage currently. The only issue we’re aware of is that Zayo, a network provider, is experiencing an outage on some of its network routes.
‘That may cause some sites using Zayo exclusively to be unreachable, whether they use Cloudflare or not. We are seeing evidence Zayo’s network is recovering and expect any errors to be short lived.’
Social media sites like X also crashed with timelines frozen in time.
Sign up for all of the latest stories
Discord, Reddit, Canva, Zoom, Fortnite, Robinhood, Microsoft Teams, and several other services also experienced issues.
Problems appeared to begin shortly after 3pm, according to Downdetector, which showed global reports of issues with X rocketing to nearly 30,000 within minutes.
Cloudflare hosts a global network that sits in front of websites to make them load faster and protect them from cyber threats.
If Cloudflare crashes or has a major outage, it can have wide knock‑on effects across the internet because millions of sites depend on it.
A list of sites all suffering outages on Monday afternoon (Picture:downdetector)
A statement on the Cloudflare site says: ‘We are investigating a fibre cut in Eastern North America. Customers connecting through North America or accessing services in Europe may see increased latencies and timeouts as Cloudflare engineers look to mitigate.’
Engineers must locate the break, dispatch repair crews and splice the cable back together before normal service can be restored.
Web3 Antivirus, a software company designed to protect financial assets, said on X: ‘When major services like X, Reddit, Discord, Zoom, Canva and others start having issues, users may get trapped via ‘alternative’ access points, status updates and temporary mirrors.
‘A fake backup link or mirror page can look helpful during an outage, but it may lead to phishing pages, fake login forms, wallet drainers or malicious downloads.’
Comment now
Comments
Add WTX as a Preferred Source on Google
Great article! This really puts things into perspective. I appreciate the thorough research and balanced viewpoint.
Interesting read, though I think there are some points that could have been explored further. Would love to see a follow-up on this topic.
Thanks for sharing this! I had no idea about some of these details. Definitely bookmarking this for future reference.
Well written and informative. The examples provided really help illustrate the main points effectively.
This is exactly what I was looking for! Clear, concise, and very helpful. Keep up the excellent work!