What Happened During Today's AWS Outage
Early this morning, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a significant global outage that disrupted tens of thousands of websites and applications, affecting billions of users worldwide.
Understanding AWS's role in the internet
If you're not familiar with AWS, here's the key thing to know: Amazon Web Services powers roughly one-third of the internet. It's the largest cloud computing provider in the world, hosting everything from small business websites to massive streaming platforms, financial services, government systems, and enterprise applications. When AWS goes down, a significant portion of the digital world goes down with it—even services that don't appear to be connected to Amazon at all.
What went wrong?
The issue began around midnight Eastern Time in AWS's primary Northern Virginia data center—one of the most critical hubs of internet infrastructure on the planet. A technical failure in their network systems created a domino effect across their infrastructure, preventing many online services from functioning properly.
Who was affected?
Major platforms including Snapchat, Reddit, Fortnite, Disney+, Coinbase, Venmo, and even parts of Amazon's own website experienced downtime or degraded performance. The scope extended far beyond consumer apps—enterprise systems, IoT devices, and backend services across virtually every industry were impacted.
Current status:
AWS engineers worked through the night to restore services. Most systems recovered by mid-morning, though some applications may still experience occasional hiccups as everything stabilizes.
This incident is a reminder of how interconnected our digital infrastructure has become—and why having contingency plans matters.
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