Why one outage can still take down half the internet

The effects of outages

by · TechRadar

Opinion By Fadl Mantash published 30 April 2026

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

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For a few hours recently, global cloud platform Cloudflare went down – and a noticeable chunk of the internet went with it.

Services stalled, platforms froze, and businesses were left dealing with failures they didn’t trigger and couldn’t control – from broken checkouts to lagging internal tools.

Fadl Mantash

Chief Information Officer at Tribe.

From the outside, it looked like the usual internet wobble. A quick refresh, a short wait, and most people moved on. Inside the organizations that depend on those upstream layers, the mood was very different.

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Teams watched systems slow down or stop entirely, and it became clear – again – how easily a single fault in one provider can spill across the wider digital ecosystem.

And these incidents aren’t isolated.

Late last year, another Cloudflare issue hit – this time a configuration change that went wrong – and it took major platforms offline within minutes. Outages at global tech platforms and hyperscalers such as AWS have shown how disruption in one region can ripple outward at speed.

Even external events, like conflict in the Middle East, have knocked data centers offline and forced providers to reroute traffic under pressure. In addition, AI‑assisted changes have introduced unexpected instability.

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