Today, from approximately 21:12 to 21:39 UTC, a configuration error in our backbone network caused an outage for Internet properties that use Cloudflare. During this period we saw traffic drop by about 50% across our network. Because of the architecture of our backbone this outage didn’t affect the entire Cloudflare network and was localized only to certain geographies.

This service disruption was not the result of an attack. It was caused by a network configuration error which caused traffic across our backbone to be sent to a single router on our global network. This quickly overwhelmed that router and caused Cloudflare network locations connected to the backbone to fail. Other locations not connected to the backbone continued to operate normally.

We have posted an initial summary of this incident on the Cloudflare blog. We’ve already made a change to the backbone configuration to make sure that this cannot happen again.

We’re deeply sorry about how this disruption may have impacted your services. Our business is based on trust and transparency and we are committed to your success.

~The Cloudflare Team