"Why Can't I Connect?" NYT and White House Hit by Server Outage... The Cloud's Dilemma

Technical Issues Suspected in CDN-Providing Cloud Companies
Cloud Services Offering Data Storage Space
Widespread Impact When Provider Faces Problems
Previously, Google and Amazon Also Experienced Cloud Errors

On the 8th (local time), a temporary access disruption occurred on the website of the US media outlet 'New York Times' (NYT). / Photo by Internet homepage capture

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Juhyung] "Huh? Why can't I access the homepage?" , "Could it be a hacking attack?"

On the 8th (local time), major news websites such as the New York Times (NYT), CNN, the UK's BBC, and The Guardian, as well as large online communities like Reddit and government websites from various countries, simultaneously experienced outages. The cause is presumed to be a problem with the server of a company managing internet content delivery. Although the access instability issue was resolved within a few hours, concerns have been raised that if a widespread server failure had occurred, it could have led to significant damage.

The access instability on that day was mostly concentrated on news websites. Online services of media outlets from around the world, including The Guardian, Financial Times (FT), Bloomberg, France's Le Monde, Denmark's TV2, and Israel's Haaretz, experienced access disruptions.

Online communities with heavy internet traffic such as Reddit, the world's largest e-commerce company Amazon, and subscription streaming service Spotify also showed unstable performance, and the White House website and the UK government homepage were temporarily inaccessible.

These websites, which displayed messages like 'Error 503 Service Unavailable' and 'Connection Failed' for several hours, began to gradually recover around 10:44 AM that day.

According to multiple reports from US and UK media including NYT and The Telegraph, the access failure incident is presumed to have occurred due to a problem with 'Fastly,' a service provider managing internet server connections.

Logo of the American IT company Fastly. Fastly is a cloud computing company that manages connections between internet content providers and users more quickly and smoothly. / Photo by Wikipedia capture

Fastly, headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA, is a cloud computing company that provides 'Content Delivery Network (CDN)' services to websites worldwide. CDN refers to technology that delivers content to internet users as quickly as possible. It installs individual servers in various regions around the world and delivers content from the server closest to the user.

Using this technology allows relatively stable service usage even during traffic surges, and provides a smooth connection even if the physical distance between the service provider and the user is large. It is especially useful when delivering large digital content such as images and videos.

Fastly stated after the access disruption occurred that they "recognized the problem and resolved it."

This access disruption has raised concerns about the vulnerabilities of cloud computing. This is not the first time that a technical error by a cloud service provider has caused widespread internet access failures.

At the end of last year, a Google Cloud system failure caused several Google services to be temporarily interrupted. / Photo by Google error page capture

Previously, at the end of last year, a cloud system failure at the US IT company Google caused services such as YouTube, Gmail, and Google Docs to be temporarily down. At that time, in the US where Google's influence is significant, major damage occurred including school education paralysis and disruptions to company operations.

In 2018, a data center failure at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world's number one cloud service, caused temporary outages of domestic e-commerce services such as Coupang and Baedal Minjok.

Cloud services are technologies that provide digital services by renting computer resources from data centers connected to the internet. In other words, service providers do not need to purchase servers and store data themselves; they can 'rent' computer resources from other cloud providers to deliver content to users.

However, as seen in incidents involving Fastly, Google, and AWS, if an error occurs in the cloud service providing the servers, multiple dependent companies can be paralyzed simultaneously.

Inside a Google data center. Cloud computing is a method of "renting" the data storage capacity of data centers connected to the internet to other companies. / Photo by Google YouTube capture

Because of this, data experts recommend avoiding extreme dependence on the cloud. They explain the need to build a so-called 'hybrid IT' system.

Bob Vennero, CEO of the US IT company Holbrook, advised in an interview with the information and communication media 'CRN' that "we must keep in mind that the cloud can go down at any time" and suggested the need to distribute information across various systems.

The alternative proposed by CEO Vennero is 'hybrid IT.' This method stores 50-75% of critical data on existing cloud services and keeps the remaining 20-50% separately on hardware purchased independently.

CEO Vennero emphasized, "Businesses must be able to protect themselves through hybrid IT," adding, "This is especially true for information essential to company services."