In a significant digital disruption that affected millions worldwide, major online platforms including X (formerly Twitter), OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Canva experienced widespread service outages for over an hour on November 18, 2025. The global connectivity issues were traced back to inconsistencies at web service provider Cloudflare, highlighting the vulnerability of modern internet infrastructure.
What Happened During the Global Outage?
The service disruptions began around 08:06 PM IST and persisted for more than sixty minutes, leaving users across multiple continents unable to access their favorite digital platforms. Social media feeds froze, AI assistants went silent, and design tools became unresponsive as the technical glitch spread across Cloudflare's extensive network.
Users reported being unable to log into their accounts, create new sign-ups, browse content feeds, or utilize premium features they had paid for. The situation became so widespread that even Downdetector, the popular service that monitors website availability, experienced operational difficulties at one point during the cascade of failures.
Understanding Cloudflare's Critical Role
Cloudflare operates as an essential intermediary layer between websites and internet users worldwide. The California-based software company functions as a bridge that connects users to the digital destinations they want to access. This positioning makes any inconsistency in Cloudflare's services a potential single-point-of-failure for millions of users simultaneously.
The scale of Cloudflare's operations is staggering. The company handles an average of 81 million HTTP requests per second and serves over 63 million HTTP(S) requests per second across millions of internet properties. Additionally, it processes an average of more than 42 million DNS requests per second, which represents a crucial step in allowing users to access websites through domain name resolution.
This enormous volume of internet traffic flows through Cloudflare's global network, which spans over 330 cities across more than 120 countries. The extensive reach explains why a single technical issue could create ripple effects across so many popular services and geographic regions simultaneously.
Cloudflare's Response and Resolution
Cloudflare's first official acknowledgment of the problem came almost ninety minutes after users began experiencing difficulties. The initial statement read: "Cloudflare is experiencing an internal service degradation. Some services may be intermittently impacted. We are focused on restoring service. We will update as we are able to remediate. More updates to follow shortly."
As the company worked to resolve the issues, they revealed that they had temporarily disabled certain services specifically for users in the United Kingdom. In a subsequent update, Cloudflare announced: "We have made changes that have allowed Cloudflare Access and WARP to recover. Error levels for Access and WARP users have returned to pre-incident rates. We have re-enabled WARP access in London."
The incident serves as a stark reminder of how dependent the modern digital ecosystem has become on infrastructure providers like Cloudflare. When these foundational services experience disruptions, the effects cascade across countless platforms and services, affecting work, communication, and entertainment for users around the world.
