Cloudflare Faces Backlash After Disruption to Key Services Like LinkedIn and Zoom
In a recent development that has sparked widespread concern, Cloudflare, the cloud services and cybersecurity firm, apologized for its latest outage, which took down popular platforms such as LinkedIn, Zoom, and Downdetector. The incident, which occurred on Friday morning, marked the company's second major outage in less than a month.
According to Cloudflare, the disruption was caused by an issue with its application programming interfaces (APIs) and was not a targeted attack. However, this explanation may do little to alleviate concerns among users and customers, who are already reeling from a series of high-profile outages in recent months.
The outage, which affected approximately 28% of Cloudflare's traffic, lasted for half an hour before being resolved shortly after 9am GMT. While the incident was deemed minor compared to its earlier outage in mid-November, it has still sparked heated debate among experts and users about the reliability and resilience of key internet services.
Critics argue that Cloudflare's centralized business model, which handles a significant portion of global web traffic, makes it vulnerable to widespread disruptions. "There's a huge amount of centralisation," says Steven Murdoch, a professor of computer science at University College London. "Cloudflare do have a good product, but it leads to vulnerabilities."
MichaΕ WoΕΊniak, a DNS and internet infrastructure expert, agrees that the outage highlights the fragility of the big tech internet ecosystem. "This again shows how brittle is the big tech internet," he says. "These companies have become too big to not fail, and because they handle so much traffic, when they do fail, this immediately becomes a massive problem."
While Cloudflare's recent outages may raise questions about its marketing claims of reliability and resilience, some experts believe that the company's high profile can actually be a positive in terms of brand awareness. "When AWS went down, their share price went up," says Murdoch. "In some ways [the outage] is great marketing, because you see how many people are using Cloudflare."
In a recent development that has sparked widespread concern, Cloudflare, the cloud services and cybersecurity firm, apologized for its latest outage, which took down popular platforms such as LinkedIn, Zoom, and Downdetector. The incident, which occurred on Friday morning, marked the company's second major outage in less than a month.
According to Cloudflare, the disruption was caused by an issue with its application programming interfaces (APIs) and was not a targeted attack. However, this explanation may do little to alleviate concerns among users and customers, who are already reeling from a series of high-profile outages in recent months.
The outage, which affected approximately 28% of Cloudflare's traffic, lasted for half an hour before being resolved shortly after 9am GMT. While the incident was deemed minor compared to its earlier outage in mid-November, it has still sparked heated debate among experts and users about the reliability and resilience of key internet services.
Critics argue that Cloudflare's centralized business model, which handles a significant portion of global web traffic, makes it vulnerable to widespread disruptions. "There's a huge amount of centralisation," says Steven Murdoch, a professor of computer science at University College London. "Cloudflare do have a good product, but it leads to vulnerabilities."
MichaΕ WoΕΊniak, a DNS and internet infrastructure expert, agrees that the outage highlights the fragility of the big tech internet ecosystem. "This again shows how brittle is the big tech internet," he says. "These companies have become too big to not fail, and because they handle so much traffic, when they do fail, this immediately becomes a massive problem."
While Cloudflare's recent outages may raise questions about its marketing claims of reliability and resilience, some experts believe that the company's high profile can actually be a positive in terms of brand awareness. "When AWS went down, their share price went up," says Murdoch. "In some ways [the outage] is great marketing, because you see how many people are using Cloudflare."
, like what even is the point of all that centralized traffic? it's just a recipe for disaster 
. and now ppl are complaining about the reliability and resilience of key internet services... shouldn't they be more reliable by now? 
anyway, sounds like cloudflare needs to step up their game 
, and maybe reevaluate their business model 
I mean, 28% of their traffic is still a big deal. How reliable can it be if they're affecting that much? 
What's up with these "experts" saying Cloudflare is too centralized? Isn't that like, basic networking 101? 
Like, what would've happened if the API just... didn't work or something? 
Wouldn't that be a real vulnerability? 
. But at the same time, you've got to give Cloudflare some credit - they're basically the unsung heroes of the internet 
. They keep us safe and online without us even realizing it.
It's just one of those things where you can't have your cake and eat it too, I guess. And yeah, the centralized business model might be convenient, but it's also like playing with fire 
. You've got to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. Still, I reckon Cloudflare will come out swinging from this 
.
. I need to see some concrete evidence that they're taking steps to address these vulnerabilities, not just some PR spin 
. Where are their incident response plans? What's being done to prevent this kind of thing from happening again?
like what even is going on with these big tech companies? can't they just have one day without a major fail? 
anyway i guess the good news is that some people think it's actually great marketing for cloudflare now? like when aws went down their share price went up 
but still can't we just have a reliable internet service without all the drama? 
It's just crazy. And what really gets me is when people say you're too centralized, but at the same time, that's kinda your whole business model, right? 
but honestly, that doesn't make it any better. You get one major outage and suddenly you're getting all the flak in the world. 
And yeah, it's crazy that Cloudflare's centralized model makes them so vulnerable to outages. It's like, they're handling so much traffic, it's like they're asking for trouble 
. I mean, I know they apologized and fixed the issue, but the damage is done - people are losing trust in these services and it's going to take a while to regain that 
.
And I get why people are worried - 28% of their traffic is affected? That's not something you want to see happen on a regular basis.
. But at the same time, I think some experts are being too harsh on the company. I mean, when AWS went down (which also happened recently), its share price actually went up 
.
It's just frustrating when something goes wrong and there's no one to blame besides the company itself 
.
. But still, I'd rather not have to think about my internet when I'm trying to work on a project 
.
. And yeah, let's be real, Cloudflare's marketing team might just benefit from this outage in terms of brand awareness 
.
, that's like, marketing magic 
. Guess we'll just have to keep on waitin' for these outages to happen tho 
... anyone got a spare VPN password I can borrow 
.
Can't say I'm surprised though, these big tech companies are always taking risks with their fancy systems 
. And honestly, it just highlights how fragile our entire internet ecosystem is 
. It's like we're all just living on borrowed time...
) and everything just freezes up on me.