Error, error, error.

Internet users around the world have faced error messages when trying to reach international news outlets such as CNN, BBC and The New York Times at 12 p.m. Swedish time.

Problems were also noticed in Sweden by media such as Svenska Dagbladet, Omni, TV4 and Aftonbladet.

But it wasn’t just in the news world that websites were down – the UK government site was having technical issues as well, as were big companies like Amazon and Spotify. Additionally, social media sites like Reddit and Pinterest were on the decline.

Disturbed supplier

What the websites have in common seems to be a disrupted content delivery network, a service called CDN. The service is provided by the American company Fastly.

Less than an hour after the first disruptions were reported around the world, Fastly said on its website that the problem had been located and rectified.

In an email to SVT Nyheter, Fastly writes that the company has found a setup that has created disruption in several of its data centers.

Internet Foundation: “Many things can go wrong”

Anne-Marie Eklund Löwinder, Head of Security at the Internet Foundation, points out that networks can be very complex things.

– There are a lot of things that can go wrong, and it has major consequences. When a large number of services use the same provider, several are affected at the same time. This (quickly) is a very big player that has global reach.

That said, the safety officer advises against “putting all the eggs in one basket” when it comes to suppliers.

– This is something that has been talked about for a very long time, that society is vulnerable, especially because many underestimate having a plan b when something happens.

A communicator from Schibsted, who owns Aftonbladet, Svenska Dagbladet and Omni, writes in an SMS to SVT that they have started backups for the logs in order to work around issues with the affected provider.