Update, 23:40 (CEST), 16:40 from Mexico: WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook come back to life. After having suffered one of the most severe falls in their history, the platforms resume their operation. Of course, this could be intermittent during the first hours.
Update, 23:40 (CEST), 16:40 from Mexico: The Facebook's system status web is online again.
Update, 23:35 (CEST), 16:35 from Mexico: According to Cloudflare, Facebook solved the BGP problem and it is a matter of time for your platforms to function properly again.
Update, 22:50 (CEST), 15:50 from Mexico: Facebook employees cannot access the internal systems of the company. Communication at the moment works through text messages and Outlook email.
Update, 22:40 (CEST), 15:40 from Mexico: According to information from The New York Times, Facebook has sent a team of engineers to solve the problem manually at a data center in California.
Original post:
In the last minutes, thousands of people from different countries have begun to report the fall of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook . Through Down Detector it is possible to verify that, indeed, user complaints are spread all over the world.
In the case of Instagram, they don't even load the latest posts viewed – contrary to what happens in recent drops. For its part, the messaging service shows the usual “Connecting …” , while Facebook cannot establish a connection with its DNS (domain name system).
An error in the BGP, the possible cause
In fact, it seems that this massive drop is due precisely to a improper configuration of BGP (border gateway protocol), which creates a routing environment between Facebook servers. Basically, without BGP, DNS doesn't work and no one can access services. The bad news is that these kinds of issues often require physical hardware intervention.
It should be mentioned that this is not the first time that WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook have problems globally this year. In March , the three platforms went offline for approximately 40 minutes.
Perhaps the fall of Facebook and Instagram is not harmful for many people, but the issue changes with the message service. In an era where remote communication has become a daily activity, and with WhatsApp being misused to attend to this activity in the labor sector, surely millions of people have been cut off from their work .
In times of the Apocalypse, of course, Twitter becomes the main lifeline of humanity . A good part of the reports and complaints of the users are shared through this social network, which is usually left standing when the other giants are in the middle of the chaos.
WhatsApp and Facebook are working to solve it
In fact, WhatsApp used their Twitter account to make it known that they are aware of the situation : “We are aware that some people are having problems with WhatsApp at the moment. We are working to get everything back to normal and we will share an update here as soon as possible.”
