For about 30 minutes many sites and apps went up blackout. Starting from 12:00 on Tuesday 16 November CloudFlare started to record problems around the world. The service that manages traffic for millions of sites it stopped working. On the platform that monitors CloudFlare’s performance, the first error message was reported at 11.48am. And then confirmed at 12.03pm.
There are many sites and platforms that use CloudFlare. We analyzed the data on Downdetector. Thousands of reports have also been registered for X and ChatGPT. Not only that, there were also problems accessing Canva and several sites that use the CloudFlare service. DownDetector itself was inaccessible for some time, it also uses CloudFlare.
At 12.37pm CloudFlare wrote, “We are seeing services recover, but customers may continue to experience higher-than-normal error rates as we continue recovery efforts.” The services are returned to work in fits and starts until 3.30pm when the down began to return.
Fastweb down today, the network is working again: “We have found the problem”
What is CloudFlare: its role in internet traffic
In short, CloudFlare’s function is to act as an intermediary between a user and a site. It’s a cloud service. Let’s try to explain it briefly and in non-technical terms. When a site has CloudFlare active, the user who wants to access the site will not arrive directly on the server where the site is hosted but it will be intercepted by CloudFlare.
It is a system to ensure users load sites faster and also offers protection mechanisms. And it manages to do this because it is based on a network of servers around the world. The number of sites using CloudFlare he is tall. Based on estimates we have 34 million websites who use CloudFlare: let’s talk about the 20% of all sites on the internet.
The downturn on November 18th involved many applications and also reminded us of one thing. Exactly as happened with the down of Amazon Web Services it was enough for one platform to experience problems to cause collapses across a very large part of the internet. A lot of what we do with a screen in front is run by monopolies.
The message on ChatGPT: “Unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to continue”
Among the blocked services there was also ChatGPT. The AI-powered chatbot from OpenAI it has become one of the most used work and study tools in recent years. Once opened only the OpenAI logo that says: “Unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to continue.” It was a generic error linked precisely to CloudFlare: to resolve it it was enough to wait for the end of the downtime.
CLOUDFLARE | The latest messages reported by CloudFlare on the status of the service
