Significant Internet Failure Hits Dozens Online Platforms and Applications

An extensive web failure has affected numerous sites and mobile apps around the world, as users noting issues accessing the internet due to difficulties at the online infrastructure system.

The impacted services comprise the social media app Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, in addition to several Amazon-operated platforms including its key e-commerce platform and the Ring security device manufacturer.

Across the United Kingdom, Lloyds bank was disrupted along with its branches Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and further notifications of difficulties using the HMRC site on the start of the week. Additionally in Britain, several Ring users used online platforms to report their security devices were failing.

In the UK alone, accounts of problems on specific applications totaled the thousands for every service.

The company stated that the outage originated in the Atlantic coast of the United States at Amazon Web Services, a unit that offers vital online infrastructure for many companies, who rent out capacity on AWS infrastructure. The cloud platform is the world’s largest online services service.

Soon after late night (PDT) in the US (8 in the morning BST), the company announced “higher problem frequencies and delays” for the cloud services in a region on the Atlantic seaboard of the US. The widespread consequence was seen to affect platforms globally, with the Downdetector site reporting issues with the identical platforms in various regions.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a tool that monitors online failures, further indicated a rise in issues on that morning, and numerous instances located in the state of Virginia, the location of the eastern US data center where officials confirmed the issues started.