#THE INTERNET ICEBERG UPDATE#
#THE INTERNET ICEBERG OFFLINE#

'You can't switch quickly to another service unless you had it set up ahead of time,' said Doug Madory, an internet infrastructure expert with the traffic-measuring company Kentik. Had this outage been more serious, customers could have moved to competitors such as Cloudflare or Akamai.īut that's not simple many businesses would have had to scramble and might have suffered losses. Fastly had $290.9 million in revenues last year.Ĭustomers rely on Fastly and its rivals to host and protect their website data from denial-of-service attacks and disruption from spikes in traffic.

#THE INTERNET ICEBERG UPDATE#

Many of Fastly's customers are news sites that use its technology to update their websites with breaking news.īuzzfeed, for example, used Fastly to cut the time its users took to reach the site by half. A ''secure by design and default'' mantra is welcome but it isn't enough in itself.' He said: 'We need resilience as an explicit policy goal, especially on the new networks we are building to deliver services to the citizen. He told The Guardian: 'The web as a whole was intended to be decentralised. The company provides a content delivery network - an arrangement that allows customer websites to store data such as images and videos on various mirror servers across 26 countries so that the data is closer to users, and thus shows up faster.ĭavid Warburton, of the cybersecurity company F5 Labs, said centralisation is fairly new for the internet - and will probably continue to raise issues. The British government is among its clients. San Francisco-based Fastly's 'edge server' computing technology is used by many of the world's most popular websites, such as The New York Times, Shopify, Ticketmaster, Pinterest, Etsy, Wayfair and Stripe. The problem was quickly resolved, and the company blamed a configuration error in its technology.īut the incident raises questions about how vulnerable the global internet is to more serious disruption.

The problem was caused by the US firm Fastly, a content delivery network (CDN) company which helps users view website content more quickly. Millions of users across the globe reported problems trying to access web pages, with Netflix, Twitch and news websites including the BBC, Guardian, CNN and the New York Times hit by the issue.

#THE INTERNET ICEBERG OFFLINE#

Security experts have warned that yesterday's internet crash that took major sites offline could be just the tip of the iceberg.Īn outage at a little-known firm that speeds up access to websites knocked a lot of top internet destinations offline on Tuesday, disrupting business and leisure for untold millions globally. Former deputy national security adviser for intelligence security Paddy McGuinness said yesterday's incident should serve as 'a wake-up call', and the Government should expand the current security approach.David Warburton, of cybersecurity company F5 Labs, said centralisation will probably continue to raise issues.

Shortly after midday UK time it said issue resolved and global network was 'coming back online'

The outage was caused by Fastly - a content delivery network company which helps users view digital content more quickly.

Millions of users worldwide reported problems accessing web pages, with CNN and BBC also hit by the issue.

Massive internet outage left hundreds of websites - including UK government, Amazon and Spotify - offline.

'A wake-up call to the web': Security experts warn mega internet crash that took Amazon, Netflix and UK Government offline yesterday could be the tip of the iceberg if lessons aren't learned

The internet iceberg