Fastly global internet outage: why did so many sites go down — and what is a CDN, anyway?
Paul Haskell-Dowland explains how and why this week’s global internet outage took place, in this crossposting from The Conversation.
If you were having difficulty accessing your favourite website on Tuesday evening Australian time, you’re not alone. A jaw-dropping number of major websites around the globe suddenly became unavailable with no immediately obvious explanation — before reappearing an hour later.
It’s disconcerting when the sites we rely on suddenly become inaccessible, and even more so when it happens on such a vast scale. This outage saw seemingly unrelated sites go dark, including the BBC, Pinterest, the Financial Times, Reddit and even The Conversation.
