Disruptions in internet access were widely reported on Tuesday as Cloudflare, a content delivery network and domain name server (DNS) service, reported it was experiencing issues in its global network.

Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources, showed that user reports from Pakistan indicated problems with Cloudflare, with complaints beginning around 4:10pm. Problems were also reported with OpenAI, Amazon Web Services, and Facebook.

Social media platform X was also experiencing outages, with more than 5,600 reports of issues with the social media platform, as of 06:51am Eastern Time (4:51pm PKT), according to Downdetector.

Cloudflare said it was “aware of and investigating an issue which impacts multiple customers”, but how did their service going down cause outages on multiple platforms?

What is a DNS service provider?

A DNS server is an address book that matches a website’s name (e.g. http://google.com) to its real IP (a set of numbers). For nationwide use, you need DNS servers that can handle a lot of traffic and respond fast.

All websites rely on DNS service providers like Amazon Web Services, GoDaddy and Cloudflare to function so that users can find and connect to the site’s server. This applies to online businesses, news outlets and social media platforms, among others.

When the provider experiences an outage, like Cloudflare did today, websites using that service will become inaccessible, as users cannot connect to the site’s server.

What causes these outages?

Websites and other services going down can be attributed to a DNS outage, which the BBC reported was the root cause of a major outage of Amazon Web Services last month, which rendered over 1,000 websites and services inaccessible.

DNS hosting service ClouDNS says on its website that a DNS outage is “a period of time when the domain name can’t be resolved to its IP address”. It adds that these can be caused by poor configuration or issues in data centres, maintenance of the authoritative server or even cyberattacks.

What are the consequences?

ClouDNS says that outages of this nature “could have a negative impact on your entire organisation and community of customers”.

“When DNS is down, websites, applications, and online services related to the domain name, such as emails, won’t function correctly,” the service says. “Unfortunately, that has the potential to damage operations, revenue, and brand reputation.”

ClouDNS listed a lack of potential visitors to websites, loss of revenue from potential sales, productivity losses and an impact on customers and partners as some of the issues that arise from a DNS service going down.