Cloudflare outage: What is the service that brought X, ChatGPT and other popular platforms down

Thousands of internet users globally are currently reporting issues with connecting to the biggest, such as X, Canva and more, in what appears to be another internet outage. The disruption is apparently being caused due to a major Cloudflare outage, and we now take a look at how it works.

Cloudflare, a global cloud network that operates multiple websites on the internet, is currently down. Various users of X (formerly known as Twitter), Canva, OpenAI, Amazon Web Services and other major platforms have reported they have been affected by an issue on November 18, with users trying to refresh timelines, load posts, or access these platforms across various devices.

Cloudflare has also officially confirmed the outage, stating that they are currently “investigating an issue which potentially impacts multiple customers.” However, you might want to know what exactly Cloudflare is and how it affects so many leading web platforms globally. We find that out that in this post.

Cloudflare is one of the biggest network providers on the internet. It provides a platform of network services to improve website performance, security, and reliability. Its website states that “Today, businesses, non-profits, bloggers, and anyone with an Internet presence boast faster, more secure websites and apps thanks to Cloudflare.”

Basically, the company offers a set of technologies that ensure websites can stay online when they are receiving high amounts of traffic, especially if the platform receives an unusually high number of visitors, or if an unfortunate bot attack attempts to take it down. In layman’s terms, Cloudflare and other similar network companies use their more resilient data centres to load websites quickly by spreading your website’s content across many servers worldwide, so users can load pages faster from a nearby location.

With so many major platforms working through Cloudflare’s infrastructure, this current outage has served as another reminder of how dependent the internet world is on these internet providers. If you are also seeing an error message or your favourite website is not loading, then don't fret; the security systems at Cloudflare are probably attempting to fix it soon.