Akamai outage takes down large chunk of internet, now fixed

Online platforms such as Zomato, Amazon, Steam and Paytm among others are back after being affected by a glitch in internet infrastructure provider Akamai Technologies’ systems.

The hiccup in the internet services began on Thursday at about 8:55pm, was acknowledged by the company an hour later, and resolved by 10:17 pm.

“We have implemented a fix for this issue, and based on current observations, the service is resuming normal operations. We will continue to monitor to ensure that the impact has been fully mitigated,” Akamai said in a tweet.

The disruption led to several users taking to Twitter and other social platforms to complain about not being able to use their favorite services.

The list of affected platforms included those owned by global giants such as Steam, Airbnb, FedEx, Barclays, Expedia, Delta Air, US Bank, Ally Bank, LastPass, and the PlayStation Network (PSN). In India, services from Zomato, Paytm, Myntra, Olx, Disney+ Hotstar, Sony Liv, ZEE5, Times of India, and NDTV were affected among many others.

Our app is down, due to a widespread Akamai outage. Our teams are working to ensure all orders placed are delivered in time. https://t.co/4btwIvjTZn

— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) July 22, 2021

@PaytmMoney @Paytm @PaytmBusiness sir my friend have paid me Rs 12000 and his account had debited , but i dont have receive money ,, please help pic.twitter.com/vNjTz6woMB

— विकाश कुमार राणा (@badal_amar_rana) July 22, 2021

Some of our digital services are currently affected due to an outage at Akamai, our content delivery network. We are working to get our services back as quickly as we can.

— The Times Of India (@timesofindia) July 22, 2021

According to the Akamai, known for providing networking and content delivery services to leading internet firms, the problem stemmed from a software configuration update which triggered a bug in its Edge DNS system that directed end-users' browsers to customer’s websites.

The glitch was fixed by rolling back the update, the company said while emphasizing that there was no cyberattack and it is reviewing its update process to prevent such issues in the future. 

The internet outage comes over a month after several global media and government websites, including the White House, New York Times, Reddit, PayPal, and Amazon, were temporarily hit due to a glitch at cloud computing services provider Fastly.

Last year, Akamai’s competitor Cloudfare also suffered from a similar downtime.