A major multi-platform internet outage struck today due to Cloudflare down. However, it is one of the largest internet infrastructure providers in the world. Moreover, the issue triggered the widespread downtime across major platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), Canva, and popular gaming services like League of Legends (LoL) and Valorant.
Moreover, users throughout the world, including in the UAE, also reported difficulties loading websites, processing payments, and accessing essential online tools. In addition, the outage started shortly after 6:00 AM ET (3 PM UAE time). Moreover, it was confirmed on the official Cloudflare status page, which itself began malfunctioning and losing its CSS styling.
What Happened?
Cloudflare confirmed the ongoing outage with a statement saying “It is aware of, and investigating an issues which potentially impact many customers”. A scheduled maintenance operation was reportedly planned in the SCL (Santiago) data centre. However, the company has not confirmed whether it has caused the outage.
According to Cloudflare’s update at 6:48 AM ET, teams are continuing to investigate the issue as many services across the world experienced degradation. Even the Cloudflare support portal was experiencing a technical problem. Hence, it shows how deeply the outage has affected its own system.
Websites Affected Globally and in the UAE
The status of Cloudflare down has impacted millions of users throughout the world, including a significant number in the UAE, where many rely on Cloudflare-powered services for work, entertainment, and communication. Below is the list of the top platforms that are affected by this outage:
- X (Twitter) — posts failed to load
- Canva — creative tools are inaccessible
- League of Legends & Valorant — login disruptions
- OpenAI (ChatGPT) — users saw Cloudflare error prompts
- PayPal & Uber Eats — payment and order issues
- Letterboxd — site inaccessible due to Cloudflare gateway failure
- Down Detector — ironically, the outage monitoring site was also unable to load
Visitors saw an error message, like an internal server error on Cloudflare’s network. Please try again in a few minutes. Moreover, users encouraged warnings, like “Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed.” However, these warnings do not indicate user-side mistakes. However, the issue lies completely within the network of the company.
Why Cloudflare Down Matters?
Cloudflare is an important backbone of the modern internet. Moreover, the company process an average of 78 million HTTP requests per second. In addition, it protects websites from cyberattacks, manages traffic surges, and ensures stable connectivity. Thus, this means the internet will feel broken when it is Cloudflare down.
On top of that, the UAE internet users particularly depend on the following Cloudflare services:
- Banking & fintech
- E-commerce
- Food delivery
- Content creation
- Government portals
- Gaming & entertainment
A brief Cloudflare outage could disrupt payments, business operations, and communication across the country.
Past Cloudflare Outages
This is not the first time Cloudflare has caused a large-scale connectivity issue. However, another Cloudflare disruption knocked out major websites, including Twitch, Etsy, Discord, and several Google services in June. Hence, that incident has highlighted how dependent the global internet ecosystem is on the Cloudflare’s backbone infrastructure.
What Should UAE Users Do?
The situation is continuously growing and changing. However, you can follow the following tips till everything gets better:
- Wait for services to stabilise
Cloudflare outages typically resolve within hours. Hence, you should wait for a few hours.
- Avoid repeated logins or resets
These are network-level issues — user troubleshooting won’t help. So, you should avoid repeated logins.
- Monitor updates from official sources
The status page of Cloudflare is slowly being restored. However, you can check updates on X.
- Retry payments later
If you faced issues with PayPal, Uber Eats, or local bank transactions, you should try again once Cloudflare confirms stability.
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