Amazon, Reddit, Twitch and major news sites briefly knocked offline in major internet outage

Several major websites, including some of the world’s largest news organisations, were knocked offline on Tuesday in a major internet outage.

Amazon Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), social network Reddit and video game streaming site Twitch were all left disconnected on Tuesday morning in addition to websites for major press outlets such as The Guardian, The Independent and CNN.

Other outlets affected included the Financial Times, The New York Times, the Evening Standard and Bloomberg, while other websites including craft shopping site Etsy Inc (NASDAQ:ETSY) and even the website of the UK Government were disrupted

The source of the outage appears to have been a technical fault at Fastly Inc (NYSE:FSLY), a cloud content delivery network that says it speeds up the passage of data around the internet.

The “edge cloud” company said earlier that it was investigating the incident, with many of the downed websites returning to service at around midday.

While the panic among internet users was brief, the incident is likely to raise further questions around the reliance of most websites on a handful of content delivery firms and hosting networks that have the power to shut down vast swaths of the web.

Shares in Fastly were down 3% at US$49.20 in pre-market trading in New York.

–Adds further details on cause, Fastly share price–

Story by ProactiveInvestors