A widespread internet outage took down multiple websites Tuesday morning, including Amazon, Google, Reddit, CNN and USA TODAY.
DownDetector, a site that tracks website outages, reported that a long list of sites, which also included Zoom, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, Hulu, Spotify, Etsy and Paypal, started experiencing problems just after 5:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday.
The outage may be linked to Fastly, a cloud platform that powers websites such as The New York Times and Shopify.
Visitors trying to access CNN.com got a message that said: “Fastly error: unknown domain: cnn.com.” Attempts to access The Financial Times website turned up a similar message while visits to The New York Times and Britain’s gov.uk site returned an “Error 503 Service Unavailable” message, along with the line “Varnish cache server,” which is a technology that Fastly is built on.
Fastly cited a service configuration that has since been disabled as a reason for the outage.
Fastly describes itself as an “edge cloud platform” that helps websites with services such as content delivery and website security. Among the major sites listed as partners: Wayfair, Wired, Yelp, Shazam, Ticketmaster and USA TODAY parent company Gannett.
With edge computing, thousands of data centers are strategically scattered around the world to shorten the distance each user needs to reach a cloud storage site, speeding up service. Similar to how your Wi-Fi signal weakens the further you away from are your hot spot, the closer you are, the faster and stronger the signal.