Notable websites shutdown around the world

WEBSITES and apps around the world went down today morning, including government websites such as Gov.uk, e-commerce websites like Target, and media websites like CNN and the New York Times.

  The outage affected dozens of countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia, as well as South Africa.

  The UK government’s website has also been affected by the massive global internet outage, along with media and entertainment sites.

  “We are investigating this as a matter of urgency,” the website’s Twitter account stated.

  The problem appeared to be related to an outage at Fastly, a cloud service provider, which Fastly helps improve load times for websites and provides other services to internet sites, apps and platforms — including a large global server network, reported a widespread failure.

  According to it, the issue has been identified and fixed the issue causing the massive internet outage, but many websites continued to be unavailable for some users as of 7 a.m. ET.

  “The issue has been identified and a fix has been applied. Customers may experience increased origin load as global services return,” the company said on its service status website.

  The provider helps improve load times for websites and provides other services to internet sites, apps and platforms — including a large global server network.

  Fastly supports news sites and apps like CNN, the Guardian, the New York Times and many others. It also provides content delivery for Twitch, Pinterest, HBO Max, Hulu, Reddit, Spotify and other services.

  Major website and app outages happen from time to time and typically don’t last long — internet service providers, content delivery networks and other hosting services are built with multiple redundancies and a global network of backup servers designed to reduce disruptions when things go haywire.