Many companies and other websites dropped offline this afternoon due to an internet outage that affected multiple parts of the company. Companies affected include (but not limited to) names like Amazon, Google, UPS, FedEx, HBO, AT&T, Verizon, Southwest Airlines, Airbnb, Home Depot, and more.
The outage was caused by a service outage at Akamai, a CDN (content delivery network) that is used by thousands of websites across the internet. These services help deliver cached content from websites to users quicker throughout the world based on geo-location. However, when these websites depend on these services and these services experience an outage, it can potentially bring down many or all of the websites involved.
The situation was resolved around 10 AM PST (1 PM EST) and has since been stable. The company stated that the issue was not related to any kind of cyber attack. Instead, it was related to a bad software configuration that triggered the event. Akamai has since rolled back the changes to resolve the situation and monitoring things to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Everything is back online once again and operating normally for both Akamai and all affected companies and websites.
Akamai Summarizes Service Disruption (RESOLVED)
At 15:46 UTC today, a software configuration update triggered a bug in the DNS system, the system that directs browsers to websites. This caused a disruption impacting availability of some customer websites. (1/3)
— Akamai Technologies (@Akamai) July 22, 2021
We apologize for the inconvenience that resulted. We are reviewing our software update process to prevent future disruptions. (3/3)
— Akamai Technologies (@Akamai) July 22, 2021
