Why Is the Internet Down Globally?

Something quite odd has recently occurred. The internet has shut down on a global scale. There’s a website called DownDetector that can tell you if websites are down. Today, it was noted that major websites such as Google, Reddit and Amazon are not working properly. The issues started occurring between 6 and 7 AM Eastern Time. The problems are being resolved as we speak. They cleared up after a few hours, approximately after 8:40 AM. But there are still plenty of connectivity problems that more than half of the world is dealing with. Let’s delve into this internet outage problem.

Reason Behind Internet Outage?

People are speculating on what is causing the internet outage on Twitter, those who still have a good WiFi connection that is. The website Discord has stated that apparently there is a general internet outage. But considering how advanced the IT systems have become, this doesn’t seem realistic.

An internet service provider Cloudflare had something else to say. There has been a route leak that is affecting the IP ranges for Cloudflare. This route leak wasn’t just the reason for Cloudflare services having connectivity issues; it was for other internet service providers as well such as Spectrum.

Discord Down As Well

The online gaming community was shocked as well because a major chatting platform they use, Discord, was shut down as well as part of the global internet outage.

The website of Discord issued this statement:

Discord is affected by the general internet outage. Hang tight. Pet your cats.

Though, a few hours later, the problem was fixed:

The issue is resolved, thank you for your patience! We will release a public post mortem for this one.

Problem Solved Or Still Going On?

The problem obviously had to be huge in order for it to put out half of the global internet! Although some of the issues have been fixed, there would still be some maintenance going on. And as per the DownDetector site, there are still a lot of issues that websites are showing.

You can check the Cloudflare site here to check the status of your country. As of now, the countries of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Brazil, Australia, Serbia and Rwanda are still facing some issues.

Was it more than a route leak the reason for internet being down? Let’s wait for any more updates on the issue.