AWS outage causes widespread internet disruptions

🚨 What Happened When AWS Went Down? The Internet Outage That Affected Millions On October 20, 2025, the internet had a really bad day. Amazon Web Services (AWS)—the backbone of about one-third of the internet—went down for nearly 15 hours, and it took a huge chunk of the digital world offline with it. So, what broke? Think of DNS (Domain Name System) as the internet's GPS. When you type a website name, DNS tells your computer where to find it. AWS's DNS system failed in their biggest data center (US-EAST-1 in Virginia), and suddenly, apps and websites couldn't find the servers they needed. But here's where it got worse: when things broke, millions of devices and apps kept retrying to reconnect—over and over again. This "retry storm" made the problem even harder to fix. Who got affected? Pretty much everyone: 📱 Social apps: WhatsApp, Snapchat, Reddit, Slack, Signal 💰 Finance: Venmo, Coinbase, Robinhood, major UK banks 🛒 Shopping: Amazon.com, DoorDash, Shopify 🎮 Entertainment: Netflix, Hulu, Roblox, Fortnite, Disney+ 🏠 Smart devices: Alexa, Ring doorbells ✈️ Airlines: United, Delta faced delays And thousands more... Over 6.5 million people reported outages worldwide. Why did this happen? The outage was likely caused by issues related to its domain name system, or DNS, which converts website addresses into numeric ones, allowing websites and apps to load on internet-connected devices. AWS is so widely used that when one piece fails, it creates a domino effect. Most companies rely heavily on AWS for everything—storage, databases, computing power. When the foundation shakes, everything built on top collapses. The big lesson? This outage reminded us that the internet isn't as invincible as it seems. Businesses need backup plans, diverse cloud providers, and systems designed to handle failures gracefully. Bottom line: One DNS issue in one data center brought down a huge portion of the global internet for 15+ hours. It's a wake-up call about how interconnected—and fragile—our digital world really is. #AWS #CloudComputing #TechOutage #DigitalInfrastructure #InternetOutage #TechNews #CloudServices #CyberResilience

Ever tried to call your parents but suddenly forgot their name and number? That’s essentially what happened to the internet last week. On October 20, AWS experienced a significant outage that impacted various digital services, including Snapchat, Fortnite, Alexa, and even some banks. This disruption occurred because the internet’s “contacts list” (DNS) temporarily lost track of where to send data. So, what actually transpired? Picture AWS as a vast digital city, with a post office (DNS) that directs every application where to deliver information. For instance: - “Fortnite? Building 12A.” - “Bank payments? Warehouse 7.” - “Alexa? Level 5, East Wing.” Unfortunately, that post office encountered a glitch. Its automation system began issuing blank addresses for DynamoDB, one of AWS’s essential databases. Suddenly, the entire city was in disarray, with users asking: - “Where’s my data?” - “Who moved my files?” - “Why is Alexa ignoring me?” The interconnected nature of these systems meant that chaos spread rapidly. The outcome was significant: - Smart homes couldn’t turn on lights. - Snapchat couldn’t load memories. - Gamers were booted mid-battle. - Bank systems froze. The internet’s most reliable tenant stumbled, leaving half the building in the dark. The resolution came when AWS engineers rolled back the faulty automation and rebuilt the DNS address list. By evening, services were restored, although millions of error messages had already been sent into the void. The key takeaway is that the cloud isn’t a singular magical entity. It consists of millions of computers working in unison, all relying on precise address information. When that address book fails, even the largest tech companies can become confused. What can businesses do? Outages like this serve as a reminder that “cloud” doesn’t equate to “always up.” - Build redundancy across regions - Use real-time observability - Have clear failover playbooks That’s where Datadog helps — giving companies visibility across infrastructure, logs, and dependencies. When the internet forgets your address, Datadog shows you exactly where to look. Because when the lights go out, seeing clearly is everything. 💡☁️

Everything back online for you...? AWS outage disrupts Facebook, Snapchat and Amazon before recovery begins: Amazon Web Services confirmed its systems were recovering following a major outage that disrupted dozens of websites and applications, including Facebook, Snapchat, Amazon, Coinbase and Robinhood, reports The Wall Street Journal, which was among several media organisations affected by the outage. [Full story: https://lnkd.in/etPrhbAZ] The outage, which began around 3:00 AM Eastern Time, affected major retailers, airlines, social media applications, financial services companies and productivity tools across the AWS US-EAST-1 region centred around Northern Virginia. Sites including Slack, United Airlines, AI tool Perplexity and videogames Fortnite and Roblox experienced disruptions. AWS traced the problem to its DynamoDB system, which provides websites with database storage and computing power. The service has more than one million customers across retail, financial services, media and entertainment sectors, with clients including Disney+, Zoom, Airbnb, Lyft, Dropbox and Nike. The company identified the root cause at 2:01 AM Pacific Daylight Time as a DNS resolution issue affecting the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1. AWS stated it was “working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery” with the issue also affecting other services in the region. Read more: https://lnkd.in/etPrhbAZ

When the Cloud Fell for a Moment On Monday morning, the internet quietly reminded us how fragile it really is. Amazon Web Services the invisible backbone powering everything from banks to airlines, smart homes to streaming suddenly went dark. Within minutes, major apps like WhatsApp, Zoom, Roblox, and even Ring doorbells stopped working. It felt as if the digital world had collectively paused. The cause? A simple software update gone wrong in AWS’s Virginia data center a small API tweak that broke the system helping apps find their servers. One misstep in the “internet’s phone book” (DNS), and millions of services were lost in translation. By the time engineers fixed it, more than 100 AWS services had stumbled. Yet the story isn’t just about an outage it’s about dependency. Nearly everything we touch online relies on a few giant infrastructures we rarely see or question. A single error in the cloud can ripple through the planet. Maybe the lesson is this: in a world built on automation and reliability, resilience still begins with human awareness. #CloudComputing #AWS #TechReliability #DigitalResilience #EngineeringLessons

Half the internet seems to be down — courtesy of the us-east-1 AWS outage. Perplexity, Amazon.com, Signal, and Substack? All were offline. And here’s the wild part — even Statuspage.io, the platform that companies use to report when they’re down, is itself down… which means many services appear “all green” while they’re actually out cold. When us-east-1 sneezes, the entire internet catches a fever. This morning’s AWS disruption rippled through everything — apps, banking, e-commerce, messaging, gaming — even the platforms that tell us what’s broken. Perplexity’s CEO confirmed the root cause was AWS. Signal, Snapchat, Roblox, Prime Video, Coinbase — all went dark for hours due to bottlenecks inside Amazon’s Virginia region. We talk about cloud as “resilient and scalable infrastructure.” But the truth is, the world today runs on a handful of single points of failure wearing cloud logos. Maybe this outage isn’t just a tech bug — it’s a mirror.

Today’s AWS outage was a serious wake-up call. 🚨 Around 3 AM this morning, Amazon’s data center in Virginia went down and took over 1,000 websites and apps with it. We’re talking Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, Duolingo, Venmo, Coinbase, and even airline systems for United and Delta. Over 6 million people reported problems. Here’s the crazy part: experts say this could cost hundreds of billions of dollars. The internet was built to be spread out and hard to break. But now? Most of our online world runs on just a few massive data centers. When one goes down, half the internet disappears with it. This showed us how fragile our systems really are. We’ve put too much in one place, and today we all felt it. Most sites came back online by this afternoon, but the lesson is clear: our “backup plans” aren’t as solid as we thought. The solution? We need data centers spread across more locations. Real diversity in where our data lives. One region shouldn’t be able to take down the entire internet. It’s time to rethink how we build our digital infrastructure.

NEW - Major internet outage currently impacting numerous services due to issues with Amazon Web Services (AWS) affecting websites, banks, and apps such as Zoom, Amazon’s products, and government services. Read more: https://lnkd.in/ewr7quWa

An outage originating with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the system that powers a truly breathtaking swath of online life, swept across hundreds of  major sites and platforms, including Facebook, Amazon, Snapchat, Roblox, Reddit, Venmo, Slack, Zoom, Hulu, Roku, Coinbase, and even Wordle. The Starbucks app went down, too, so that customers trying to order their early-morning caffeine fix found the routine task at least briefly impossible. The McDonald’s app was similarly affected. The trouble appears to have begun around 3 a.m. E.T. in Amazon’s “US-EAST-1” data region, a cluster of servers in Northern Virginia that handles traffic for much of the East Coast. A malfunction in the company’s DynamoDB system (essentially a cloud-based database engine) sent error rates surging across dozens of AWS products. That single failure rippled outward fast. Apps crashed. Payment platforms froze. Delta and United check-in kiosks blinked out, too. Media organizations attempting to cover the crash, including the Wall Street Journal, found their own sites affected. Downdetector, which monitors site disruptions, listed hundreds of affected companies. By 5:30 a.m., Amazon said it was "seeing significant signs of recovery." But for some, services remain sluggish. Reddit, as of this writing, is still struggling to come back online. A cloud that casts a long shadow The widespread failure highlights just how centralized the internet-as-we-know-it has become. It also highlights AWS’s critical role. AWS hosts millions of sites and provides the computing muscle for much of the global economy, from gaming to banking, streaming entertainment to healthcare. Restaurant and ride-hailing apps, too. In other words, when AWS falters, the impact isn’t limited in scope. It becomes the equivalent of a major regional power outage. It’s also not the first time this has happened. AWS has suffered similar incidents in recent years, each one revealing how the internet’s existence largely depends on just a handful of tech giants. -- QZ #AWS #Amazon #internet #apps #cloud #datacenters #commerce #ecommerce #business #serviceoutage #outage #economy https://lnkd.in/dKwCzX-F

🚨 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐀𝐖𝐒 𝐎𝐮𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐭 Today, a major outage hit Amazon Web Services (AWS) the cloud network that powers a huge part of the global internet. The issue started in 𝐀𝐖𝐒’𝐬 𝐔𝐒-𝐄𝐚𝐬𝐭-𝟏 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐨𝐧 (𝐍𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐕𝐢𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐚),one of its main data center hubs. This single point is so central that when it goes down, it sends shockwaves across the digital world. 🔹 What happened: Early Monday, AWS reported 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲, across multiple services. Investigations later pointed to a 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐃𝐍𝐒 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 basically, the system that helps connect users and apps to Amazon’s internal services affecting 𝐀𝐦𝐚𝐳𝐨𝐧 𝐃𝐲𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐨𝐃𝐁, a key database system. 🔹 The result: Within minutes, countless apps and services began to fail or slow down worldwide not because they were broken, but because they all depend on AWS to function. Here are some of the affected platforms: Snapchat · Duolingo · Roblox · Zoom · Clash Royale · MyFitnessPal · Life360 · Clash of Clans · Canva · Wordle · Coinbase · Slack · Smartsheet · Pokémon Go · Epic Games · PlayStation Network · Peloton · Rocket League and even some banks, government systems, and financial institutions in the US and Europe. 🔹 Why this outage was massive: AWS is the world’s largest cloud provider millions of websites and apps run on it. The US-East-1 region alone handles an enormous share of that global traffic. So, when its core services go down, the ripple effect touches almost every corner of the internet. 🔹 What AWS said: Amazon confirmed they’re seeing “significant signs of recovery” as engineers work to clear the backlog of delayed requests. They’re still analyzing the root cause, but early indicators point to 𝐃𝐍𝐒 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬. 🔹 The big picture: This wasn’t just an app glitch it was a reminder of how interconnected our digital world is. A single regional failure at AWS can disrupt everything from social media and gaming to fintech and government operations in a matter of minutes. #AWS #Outage #TechNews #Amazon #CloudComputing #DigitalInfrastructure