Internet Traffic Issues Caused by Amazon IT Issue

You may have noticed the Internet is (or was, depending on when you're reading this) a bit wonky on October 20th.

What's going on?

Short answer, an Amazon data center is having IT issues, and we're feeling the impacts.

How is an Amazon IT issue causing this?

Longer answer, Amazon has a sub-division that does cloud storage and infrastructure, called Amazon Web Services, or AWS. Other companies pay Amazon to store their data and manage computer infrastructure for them, rather than do it themselves.

However, when a location where all that is done (in this case, in Virginia) has an issue, access to the data and equipment is cut off, leaving everything that relies on it hanging.

What's been affected?

In addition to Amazon's own services, like Alexa and Amazon Prime, other sites and services that are having issues or just not working period include:

Websites/Apps

Lyft
Zoom
GrubHub
Snapchat
Venmo
Canva
Apple Music

Video Games

Fortnite
Roblox
Dead By Daylight
League of Legends
EA
Ubisoft

And that's only a partial list. Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile are also reporting issues in connection with this outage.

Obviously, Amazon is working on fixing this, and progress is being made, but as of right now, there's no word on when everything will be back up and running and when things will settle down.

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Gallery Credit: Stephen Lenz