Massive internet outage takes down PlayStation Network, Amazon

Websites were knocked offline Thursday as network speciality firm Akamai said it is investigating an issue with its service.

The scope and cause of the trouble were not disclosed, but reports of internet outages from locations around the world spiked at website Downdetector.

“We have implemented a fix for this issue, and based on current observations, the service is resuming normal operations,” Akamai said in response to an AFP inquiry.

“We will continue to monitor to ensure that the impact has been fully mitigated.”

During the outage, consumers were unable to access services like Ally Bank, Fidelity, Sony’s PlayStation Network, Airbnb, and more. Several airline sites were also affected: Delta, British Airways, and Southwest’s sites were either down, or had important functionality like flight check-ins broken.

The disruption came just weeks after Akamai was at the heart of a major online outage that hit bank and airline websites on both sides of the Pacific.

Akamai at that time said around 500 of its customers were briefly knocked offline on because of a problem with one of its online security products.

The incidents draw attention to the stability of economically vital online platforms and the key role that a handful of little-known “CDN” — content delivery network — companies play in keeping the web running.

In June, US media and government websites, including the White House, New York Times, Reddit and Amazon were temporarily hit after a glitch with cloud computing services provider Fastly.

Fastly offers a service to speed up loading times for websites.