Major Internet Failure Hits Numerous Websites and Apps
A widespread internet outage has affected numerous sites and mobile apps around the world, and users noting problems getting online due to difficulties at Amazon’s web hosting platform.
The disrupted apps comprise Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, and Duolingo, as well as a host of Amazon-owned platforms including its main retail site and the Ring doorbell doorbell company.
Throughout Britain, Lloyds bank was affected as well as its affiliates Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and further notifications of issues using the HM Revenue and Customs online portal on that morning. Also in the UK, many Ring customers turned to online platforms to report their security devices were not working.
In the UK alone, notifications of disruptions on specific applications reached the many thousands for each app.
Officials confirmed that the issue started in the east coast of the US at AWS, a unit that supplies crucial internet infrastructure for a host of businesses, who rent out resources on Amazon servers. AWS is the biggest global cloud computing system.
Shortly after late night (PDT) in the America (morning UK time), Amazon confirmed “elevated failure rates and latencies” for the cloud services in a zone on the eastern US of the US. The ripple effect appeared to disrupt services around the world, and the Downdetector site showing outages with the corresponding services in different parts of the world.
The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a service that tracks online failures, further indicated a increase in outages on Monday morning, with many of them found in the state of Virginia, the location of the AWS US-East-1 zone where officials confirmed the problems started.
