Major update given on why 'half the internet' just stopped working

Amazon Web Services has issued a major update given on why 'half the internet' just stopped working.

The ordeal started earlier this morning (20 October) after Downdetector, a website that tracks complaints about websites and web services not working, showed the sudden and widespread nature of the outage, which has affected a whole load of apps, including Amazon Web Services, Amazon, Canva, Duolingo, Snapchat, Ring and many more.

The problems appear to be related to an issue at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud computing platform that lets people 'rent' servers without the need to buy physical computers or data centres.

AWS has since issued a series of updates on the case as concerns grow across the globe.

The first update shared on Amazon's service status page, reads: "We are investigating increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-EAST-1 Region. We will provide another update in the next 30-45 minutes."

The second, which came out around 40 minutes later, added: "We can confirm increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region. This issue may also be affecting Case Creation through the AWS Support Center or the Support API. We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause. We will provide an update in 45 minutes, or sooner if we have additional information to share."

Around half an hour after that, AWS shared: "We can confirm significant error rates for requests made to the DynamoDB endpoint in the US-EAST-1 Region. This issue also affects other AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region as well. During this time, customers may be unable to create or update Support Cases. Engineers were immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause. We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share, or by 2:00 AM."

'Potential root'

Around 30 minutes later, the update continued to share a 'potential root' for the issue.

"We have identified a potential root cause for error rates for the DynamoDB APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region," AWS wrote. "Based on our investigation, the issue appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1. We are working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery.

"This issue also affects other AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region. Global services or features that rely on US-EAST-1 endpoints such as IAM updates and DynamoDB Global tables may also be experiencing issues. During this time, customers may be unable to create or update Support Cases. We recommend customers continue to retry any failed requests. We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share, or by 2:45 AM."

'Signs of recovery'

About 20 minutes later, AWS added: "We have applied initial mitigations and we are observing early signs of recovery for some impacted AWS Services. During this time, requests may continue to fail as we work toward full resolution. We recommend customers retry failed requests.

"While requests begin succeeding, there may be additional latency and some services will have a backlog of work to work through, which may take additional time to fully process. We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share, or by 3:15 AM."

And the very latest update which came out five minutes after the last revealed that things seem to be on the mend.

"We are seeing significant signs of recovery. Most requests should now be succeeding. We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests. We will continue to provide additional information," AWS wrote.

People's panic

People have since rushed to social media to share their panic over the ordeal with one X user writing: "Holy sh*t the whole f*cking internet is down."

"Wow AWS went down and took half the internet with it," penned a second while a third chimed in: "Just witnessed half of the internet go down lol."

A fourth piped up: "So the entire internet just went down basically?"

"Damn, the AWS outage took down everything on the internet," a fifth wrote.

Another echoed: "Yes it’s not just you. Large parts of the internet are down."

And a final X user added: "Of all the things I could've expected today I was NOT expecting the whole internet to go down."