If you have recently tried to open the Amazon, Reddit, or Spotify website, and got an error message, don’t stress, because you are not the only one. Several major websites, including the three above, are currently experiencing issues. As per reports, the primary issue seems to be with the CDN or the content delivery network that these websites use.
So, if you currently (as of writing this article) go to any website that is hosted on the Fastly CDN, you will find the “Error 503 Service Unavailable” message pop-up on your screen.
Now, for the unaware, a CDN or a content delivery network is essentially a network system that caches data in regional and localized proxy servers and data centers. There aren’t a lot of CDNs that can handle the traffic requirements of big websites such as Amazon, Twitter, or Spotify. Amongst a few, Fastly is one such CDN that hosts many of the major websites in the market.
Currently, if you go to Fastly’s Service Status page, you will find several updates about today’s interruption. Although we do not know anything specific about what caused the failure, the global disruption affected millions of users as well as businesses around the world.
However, following a few updates today, Fastly states that they have identified the issue and are currently implementing the fix. So, your favorite websites will be live again soon. In fact, some of them including Amazon and Reddit have come back online.
