Significant Internet Outage Impacts Dozens Websites and Mobile Apps

A large-scale internet failure has disrupted dozens sites and mobile apps around the world, and users experiencing troubles connecting to the web after problems at the web hosting service.

The affected platforms comprise Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, the messaging service Signal, and Duolingo, in addition to a host of Amazon-operated services like its key e-commerce website and the Ring device manufacturer.

Across the United Kingdom, the financial institution Lloyds was disrupted along with its affiliates the bank Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and further notifications of issues reaching the the tax authority website on the start of the week. Also in the UK, many Ring device owners used online platforms to complain their security devices were not working.

Just within Britain, notifications of problems on individual applications ran into the many thousands for every service.

Amazon reported that the problem began in the east coast of the United States at Amazon Web Services, a unit that supplies crucial online framework for numerous companies, who lease resources on AWS infrastructure. The cloud platform is the most extensive web hosting service.

Just after late night (PDT) in the US (morning UK time), Amazon confirmed “increased failure rates and slowdowns” for AWS services in a region on the Atlantic seaboard of the US. The ripple effect appeared to hit services around the world, and the outage tracking website reporting problems with the same sites in multiple continents.

Cisco’s Thousand Eyes, a platform that tracks online failures, further indicated a surge in issues on the start of the week, with many of them found in the Virginia area, the region of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where the company stated the outage originated.