Cloudflare Down: hit amid massive internet outage more than 6 website outages

Why is Cloudflare important?

Cloudflare sits behind a vast portion of the modern internet. It powers content delivery, security protections and tools that keep websites online during traffic spikes or cyber attacks. When its systems fail, the impact ripples far beyond any single service. This time was no different. A broad range of unrelated websites appeared to go down at the same moment, echoing the scale of last month’s AWS outage.

In an initial update, Cloudflare confirmed that it was “aware of, and investigating an issue which potentially impacts multiple customers”, though it did not share a cause or a timeline for a fix. The problems began around 11.30am UK time. Some pages loaded on refresh, but most users continued to see an “internal server error on Cloudflare’s network” telling them to try again later.

Even Down Detector, the outage tracking site many users turn to first, struggled to load because it also relies on Cloudflare. When it eventually came back, it showed a spike in reports on platforms like X and Spotify.

What does Cloudflare do?

To understand the widespread impact, we must understand Cloudflare’s role in the grand scheme of the internet. It is not just a typical website host like AWS – it is an internet infrastructure service that provides mission-critical functions to millions of websites and online applications globally.

Cloudflare operates a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which essentially copies a website’s content and stores it on servers across the globe. When a user requests a website, the CDN delivers the content from the nearest server, making the site load faster. More importantly, Cloudflare provides crucial security services, including protection against massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, where bad actors attempt to flood a victim’s server with overwhelming traffic.

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