Significant Internet Failure Affects Many Sites and Applications

An extensive web disruption has disrupted many sites and apps worldwide, as users noting problems connecting to the web after problems at Amazon’s cloud computing system.

The impacted services include the social media app Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, Signal, and Duolingo, in addition to several Amazon-operated platforms like its key e-commerce website and the Ring security home security firm.

In the UK, the financial institution Lloyds was impacted as well as its subsidiaries Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and further notifications of issues reaching the the tax authority online portal on that morning. Also in the UK, multiple Ring device owners used networks to report their security devices were not working.

In the UK alone, reports of problems on individual apps reached the tens of thousands for each app.

Officials confirmed that the problem began in the Atlantic coast of the America at AWS, a division that supplies vital internet backbone for a host of companies, who rent out space on AWS infrastructure. AWS is the most extensive online services platform.

Soon after late night (PDT) in the America (morning UK time), the company announced “increased error rates and delays” for the cloud services in a region on the east coast of the United States. The widespread consequence was seen to hit services around the world, and the Downdetector site indicating issues with the identical platforms in multiple continents.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a service that tracks web disruptions, also reported a rise in issues on the start of the week, with many of them located in Virginia, the region of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where AWS said the outage started.