Update, Thursday July 22, 7:30 PM (CET): Akamai resolved the problem in its DNS service, so platforms should be back to normal in a matter of minutes. Another internet crash that is resolved quickly.
A large number of websites and internet platforms are experiencing connection problems in the last few minutes. Among them Steam, FedEx, Steam, UPS, Airbnb, HBO Max, Delta, Salesforce and the PlayStation Store, to name just a few. Online games like Call of Duty and Apex Legends have also been affected. Apparently, this is all due to the failure of the DNS service of Akamai , one of the largest distributed computing service providers in the world.
Meanwhile, Akamai has already acknowledged that it has problems in its network . “We are actively investigating the issue. If you have questions or are experiencing problems due to this issue, please contact Akamai technical support. In the interest of time, we provide you with the most up-to-date information available, which is subject to changes, corrections, and updates.” , they mentioned. The internet crash, then, is again tied to a cloud service provider.
The inconveniences are occurring according to the region where the mentioned platforms are visited. In the United States, for example, there are difficulties in accessing Amazon and Amazon Web Services . Cloudflare also has a problem in various countries around the world. As you can see in the lower map provided by Pingdom in real time, reports of internet outages are multiplying rapidly, mainly in North America and Europe:
This is not the first time in 2021 that an internet crash occurs globally . Just last June 8, an error in Fastly's CDN network caused Amazon, Twitch, Reddit, Twitter, Spotify, Financial Times or The Guardian, among others, to be left without service for a couple of hours. Thousands of people, especially from the European continent, were affected. Not so in America, because the failures arose at dawn on that continent – most of them slept in the middle of the apocalypse.
Interestingly, Fastly's situation was caused by an innocent person . A user of the platform, after making specific adjustments to his service, triggered the fall of the internet all over the world. Fastly's system had a critical flaw that was not identified during the quality control process, so it was present in the final version waiting to be accidentally activated. After the event, 85% of its network collapsed , generating a domino effect that affected thousands of websites.
