Amazon Web Services just experienced a massive DNS failure that knocked out huge chunks of the internet this morning. The outage, which started around 3 a.m. ET, disrupted major platforms including Zoom, Signal, Coinbase, and even Amazon's own Ring devices before being resolved hours later.
Amazon Web Services just delivered a harsh reminder of how much of the internet runs through its data centers. A DNS infrastructure failure starting at 3 a.m. ET brought down swaths of websites and apps that millions rely on daily, from video calls to cryptocurrency trading.
The casualties read like a who's who of essential digital services. Zoom users couldn't join meetings, Signal messages went undelivered, Coinbase traders watched helplessly as they lost access to their crypto portfolios, and Fortnite players got booted from matches. Even Amazon's own Ring doorbell cameras went dark, leaving homeowners temporarily blind to their front doors.
The root cause was DNS - the internet's phone book that translates human-readable web addresses into the numerical IP addresses that computers actually use. When DNS fails, it's like having all the street signs disappear at once. Your destination still exists, but there's no way to find it.
Amazon controls roughly 30% of the global cloud market, making it the backbone for countless businesses, government agencies, and consumer services. That dominance means when AWS hiccups, the entire internet feels it. Banks, news sites, and government portals all struggled to load as the outage rippled across time zones.
The company's terse statement this morning confirmed what millions of users already knew: something had gone very wrong. "The outage had been fully mitigated and most services are returning to normal," Amazon announced around mid-morning, without explaining what actually broke in the first place.
