Did your cell service go out on Monday? Millions of Verizon customers were left in the dark and no one’s explaining why.
Facebook, Instagram back after 6-hour outage
Many people live their lives on social media. Everything from instant messages to life achievements occurs through applications like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Tap or click here for 10 Facebook privacy and security settings you need to change right now.
So, what happens when social media sites like Facebook with billions of users have an outage? That’s what happened Monday when Facebook had its most extended outage since 2008, affecting not just Facebook but its other platforms as well. As it starts to come back online, we are all wondering what happened and why.
With an outage of just over six hours, there’s no clear answer (yet) to why these sites were down for so long. Let’s look at what was affected and what Facebook says about the massive outage.
It’s affected more than just Facebook
At 11:40 a.m. EST Monday, Facebook and its other platforms, including Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp went down simultaneously. Essentially blocking everyone from using them.
An hour later, Facebook posted on Twitter, saying it was aware of the issue and actively addressing the problems as quickly as possible. Five more hours passed before platforms started to return.
Later, Facebook posted on Twitter again to say that it was experiencing networking issues and still addressing them. This is the most significant outage since 2008 when Facebook only had 80 million users. Today, it has 2.85 billion users, all affected by the outage.
In addition to users of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, Facebook employees could not communicate internally. The outage went so far as to block employees from even accessing the building with ID badges.
So what happened?
Facebook has not yet confirmed the source of the outage. Several outlets are reporting a possible DNS failure, or possibly having to do with BGP, which stands for Border Gateway Protocol.
That’s a system that makes sure internet traffic gets from point A to point B on the best route available, just like following a map. If BGP was indeed the problem, it means that for a time, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp essentially fell off the map.
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📵 Network meltdown: A massive outage across AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile left about 80,000 folks without service yesterday. No calls — a total mess. In a pinch, text 911, use Wi-Fi calling if you need to reach someone, or try data roaming. The cause? Still a big question mark. I share my hunch on the video podcast.
Clever trick to use next time a website or service you need is down
The video conferencing service Zoom experienced audio and video issues Sunday morning, which left virtual Sunday church goers without weekly service. The problem was so bad users were unable to launch the site.
While Zoom users flooded social media to find fellow users and discuss the situation, the company took to fix the issue. Within a few hours, Zoom was back up, offering apologies. Tap or click to reveal the 11 best Zoom tricks you’ll wish you knew sooner.
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A software update by CrowdStrike took down tons of computer systems around the world. Banks, businesses, hospitals, and more were all impacted. Plus, Amazon Prime Day updates and Zoom’s demand for a return to the office.
AT&T wants to "make it right"
They’ve laid out a plan to fix things after last week’s outage. Let’s check it out.