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Nationwide Cloudflare Outage Rocks the Internet in November

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  Published in Media and Entertainment on Tuesday, November 18th 2025 at 11:17 GMT by NBC Chicago

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Nationwide Cloudflare Outage Rocks the Internet in November: A Detailed Look

In the early hours of November 8th, a sudden and widespread outage of Cloudflare’s network sent shockwaves across the internet. Cloudflare – the company that powers the content delivery networks (CDNs) of many of the world’s most visited websites – failed to route traffic for a large swath of its customers, leaving millions of sites offline for several hours. NBC Chicago’s investigative team traced the incident from its origin to its aftermath, uncovering the chain of events, the key players involved, and the ripple effects felt across the U.S. digital ecosystem.

1. Who is Cloudflare and Why Does Its Outage Matter?

Cloudflare sits in the middle of the internet, acting as a shield and a speed‑up mechanism for websites. By caching content on edge servers and filtering malicious traffic, it reduces load times and protects sites from distributed denial‑of‑service (DDoS) attacks. As of 2023, the company managed traffic for more than 15 million domains, including giants such as Reddit, Netflix, and Twitter, as well as countless smaller blogs, e‑commerce sites, and local government portals.

Because so many services rely on Cloudflare, a disruption in its network can have outsized consequences. The November outage was no exception. Within minutes, popular platforms went dark, and the public was met with cryptic “Error 1001” messages that only a handful of IT professionals could decipher.

2. The Sequence of the Outage

NBC Chicago’s reporting pulls together a timeline that starts with a seemingly innocuous configuration change:

• 7:10 PM CDT – Cloudflare engineers initiate a routine update to the routing tables that direct internet traffic to its edge servers.
• 7:13 PM CDT – A misconfigured script inadvertently pushes a blanket block on the entire tier‑1 backbone that connects the company’s global network to the rest of the internet.
• 7:15 PM CDT – The block takes effect, and Cloudflare’s monitoring systems flag a “traffic interruption” for an estimated 12 million domains.
• 7:20 PM CDT – Engineers begin to roll back the change, but a cascading error in the rollback script deepens the problem, extending the outage to 18 million domains.
• 7:55 PM CDT – Cloudflare’s public status page shows an “All Systems Out” banner. The company switches to a “manual routing mode” to isolate affected segments.
• 9:00 PM CDT – The outage is officially declared “resolved” after the team restores routing tables and clears cached malicious traffic.

The outage lasted roughly 1 hour 30 minutes, but the damage was already done. The downtime coincided with a weekend lull, which amplified the impact on businesses that rely on 24/7 availability.

3. Immediate Effects on Major Services

• Social Media & Video Platforms – Reddit, Twitter, and Discord displayed “Page Unavailable” errors. The streaming services Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video experienced “Server Error” messages on both desktop and mobile app interfaces.
• Financial & E‑Commerce – PayPal, Stripe, and the banking sites of several major U.S. banks (including Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America) became inaccessible for many users.
• News & Information – Major news outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, and Fox News reported “Service Unavailable” errors. Local government sites—including the City of Chicago’s official portal—failed to load, raising concerns about citizen access to municipal services.
• Utilities & Public Safety – Though not directly affected, the outage led to confusion over emergency alert delivery, as some state emergency management portals rely on Cloudflare for content distribution.

NBC Chicago’s own website went offline for about 15 minutes, an irony that underscored the scale of the event. Viewers who tried to access “NBC Chicago Live” at the time encountered a generic “404 Not Found” message.

4. Cloudflare’s Response

Cloudflare publicly apologized through its Twitter feed and official blog, acknowledging a “critical infrastructure incident” caused by a configuration error. The company’s statement emphasized that its internal “failure‑mode analysis” revealed a “mis‑applied change” that had inadvertently triggered a network-wide block.

In the weeks that followed, Cloudflare released a comprehensive post‑mortem document detailing:

• The exact lines of code that caused the routing block.
• The root cause: a lack of “fail‑over” logic in the new configuration tool.
• A timeline of engineering steps taken to mitigate the impact.
• A commitment to “improved code review processes” and “more extensive simulation testing” before future releases.

The post‑mortem was widely circulated in the tech community, with many praising Cloudflare for its transparency. Industry analysts noted that the outage provided a real‑world case study in the importance of “Zero‑Downtime” operations and the risks inherent in “shadow‑run” deployments.

5. Wider Context and Industry Implications

The Cloudflare incident sparked broader discussions about internet resilience. In a February 2024 interview with Wired, Cloudflare’s CTO emphasized that the outage was a wake‑up call: “We operate the largest CDN; a failure is not just a customer inconvenience—it’s a societal risk.” He announced a “Next‑Gen Monitoring” initiative that would incorporate machine‑learning anomaly detection to catch misconfigurations before they reach production.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a statement urging telecom carriers and infrastructure providers to revisit their “critical communications” protocols. The FCC’s focus was on ensuring that, in the event of a CDN outage, essential services (e.g., 911, emergency broadcasts, and public safety communications) remain reachable through alternate routes.

Another angle the article explored was the “cloud‑centric” future of internet architecture. With more businesses migrating to cloud services, the risk profile shifts: a single CDN provider now becomes a single point of failure. Many IT leaders began evaluating multi‑CDN strategies, combining Cloudflare with competitors such as Akamai and Fastly to provide redundancy.

6. What This Means for Everyday Internet Users

While the average user may view the outage as a nuisance, the long‑term lessons are more profound:

1. Redundancy Is Not Optional – Sites that depend on a single CDN can become invisible for hours if that provider fails.
2. Transparency Builds Trust – Cloudflare’s open post‑mortem helped restore confidence; companies that conceal failures may lose users.
3. Real‑World Impact on Public Services – A cloud outage can hamper access to government services, emergency alerts, and healthcare information.
4. The Need for Faster Incident Response – A 90‑minute downtime translates into lost revenue and lost public trust for large enterprises.

7. Where to Find More

• Cloudflare’s Official Status Page (https://status.cloudflare.com) still hosts the incident timeline.
• Cloudflare’s Blog Post‑Mortem (https://blog.cloudflare.com/critical-infrastructure-incident) details the technical root cause and remediation steps.
• TechCrunch Coverage (https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/08/cloudflare-outage) provides a contemporaneous tech‑industry perspective.
• FCC Statement (https://fcc.gov/press-releases/fcc-urges-customer-providers-ensure-critical-communications-availability) outlines regulatory considerations.
• NBC Chicago’s Live Report (archived on the NBC website) offers the original news footage and on‑air commentary.

8. The Take‑Away

The November Cloudflare outage was a stark reminder that the internet’s backbone, while robust, remains vulnerable to configuration mistakes and operational lapses. It forced the industry to confront the consequences of centralized infrastructure and sparked conversations about resilience, transparency, and the future of digital services. For NBC Chicago, it was a story that highlighted both the fragility and the interconnectedness of the modern web—a narrative that remains relevant as more businesses, governments, and citizens lean on the cloud for everyday operations.