GLOBAL OUTAGE OF INTERNET

GLOBAL OUTAGE OF INTERNET

Subject: Science & tech

Context: Several big websites around the world went down for about half an hour, because of a major issue with the content delivery network (CDN) of American cloud computing services provider fastly.

Most users would have seen a 503 error when trying to access these websites, indicating that the browser was not able to access the server.

Concept:

What is a CDN?

• A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a highly-distributed platform of servers that helps minimize delays in loading web page content by reducing the physical distance between the server and the user.
• Without a CDN, content origin servers must respond to every single end user request.
• A CDN refers to a geographically distributed group of servers that work together to provide fast delivery of Internet content.
• They house content close to the telecom service providers’ networks. Majority of web traffic across the world today is routed through CDNs.
• Platforms such as Netflix, Facebook, and Amazon— ones with large quantities of data held in global libraries — host their geographically relevant content closer to where that content is to be consumed.
• This ensures the end customer is able to access the content faster. Another reason companies rely on these CDNs is to help protect their sites against traffic spikes, distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks, etc.

Past experiences:

• This is not the first time that an issue with CDN has caused many other dependent websites to go down. Previously in 2020, Cloud flare, another leading global cloud platform, had faced issues that impacted its client websites.
• The Cloud flare glitch resulted in sites such as Discord, Feedly, Politico, Shopify, and League of Legends going down.