An error in the distribution network (CDN) of the Fastly server has caused the fall of many web pages around the world this Tuesday around noon. The affected pages include media such as the New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, AS, Marca, Antena 3 or La Sexta, and social networks such as Twitter, Twitch or Reddit.
Fastly is one of the most important CDN (Content Distribution Network) services worldwide. CDN service companies offer servers to place local copies of certain content closer to the consuming end user, thus reducing latency and connection speed. Thus, for example, content on the Reddit website may not be sent to a user in Salamanca from servers located in the United States, but rather in Madrid, London or Paris. Crashing these intermediate servers can make content inaccessible.
On its Status page, Fastly indicates that as of 09:58 UTC it is investigating a “potential impact on the performance of its CDN services.” Subsequently, at 10:44 UTC, it reported, without detailing the circumstances, that it had identified the failure, and implemented a correction. By 13:00 Spanish time, many websites had already recovered service.
Many users around the world reported an error message “Error 503 Service Unvaliable” when trying to access media pages, social networks and other web services. On other pages the message “connection failure” appeared.
Among the affected web pages are the social networks Twitter, Twitch and Reddit; media such as New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, AS, Marca, Antena 3 or La Sexta; services such as Shopify, Paypal, Stackoverflow or GitHub and websites such as Amazon, eBay, Pepefone, Vimeo, Hulu, HBO Max or Spotify.
The origin of the failure is not yet known
Initially it seemed that the failure was the fault of AWS, Amazon’s cloud server service used by thousands of websites on the Internet. But it wasn’t long before it was discovered that the bug came from Fasty’s CDN.
At the moment the reason for this failure is not yet known. But ruling out that the failure is the fault of a web host means there would be no data at risk. CDNs are responsible for releasing load on web servers, redistributing information around the world.
As Fastly reports, failures in its service have been widespread. All of their servers in the United States, Europe, Latin America, the Asia-Pacific area, India, and South Africa appeared with the warning “limited performance”. In Europe Fastly has 18 facilities, one of which is located in Madrid. All of them are affected by the failure.