Canvas, Instacart, Verizon, Fanduel, Snapchat, Venmo down. What is Amazon Web incident?

Major websites and popular apps were down and unavailable Monday, Oct. 20, due to an Amazon Web Services outage, or AWS incident.

The disruption forced Verizon phones into “SOS” mode, and downed apps and impacted schools and teachers with the online platform Canvas by Instructure down, as well as Zoom, Venmo, Snapchat, Instacart, Robinhood, Ring, Instacart and more reportedly down.

While Amazon says they are “investigating the root cause and have identified the issue” of downed AWS services as of 11:04 a.m. ET, customers continue to see major glitches and errors on apps like Zoom, Reddit, Starbucks, Wordle, Ring, Fortnite and Snapchat. The outage appears to have started around 3 a.m. ET, according to Downdector.com, which tracks online outages. Amazon said the East-1 Region of the United States has been impacted the greatest.

What is AWS?

Amazon Web Services, often called AWS, is a cloud computing platform owned and operated by Amazon. It’s similar to Google Drive, where companies deploy their websites and programs without having to pay for servers and infrastructure, which could be expensive. Instead, companies pay a monthly subscription fee to Amazon.

Is AWS still down?

Yes, the latest update on Amazon’s AWS status page shows more issues on major apps and websites are occurring as of 11:04 a.m. ET today, Oct. 20. Amazon confirmed “significant” errors during a 10:15 a.m. update, later stating they are “continuing to investigate the root cause” for the network issues. They did, however, say the issue originated from with their EC2 internal network — which is Amazon’s Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) that enables businesses to run their application programs in the public cloud.

What websites, apps are down?

Venmo, Instacart, Robinhood, and Canvas appear to be the hardest hit as of the time of this reporting, according to Downdetector, although major apps and sites are down like Boost Mobile, Instacart, Zoom, Amazon, Snapchat, Canvas by Instructure, Reddit, Roblox, Pinterest, and Fanduel. Video game systems like Playstation and XBox Live are down, as well as:

• Boost Mobile
• Fetch
• Smartsheet
• Life360
• Collegeboard
• Amazon Alexa
• Navy Federal Credit Union
• AT&T
• Ring
• Webukk
• The New York Times/Wordles/NYT Games
• Apple Music
• T-Mobile
• Truist
• Dead by Daylight
• Microsoft Outlook
• Adobe Creative Cloud
• Classlink
• Asana
• Coursera
• Capital One
• GoTo
• Duolingo
• Ally
• Blink Security
• DoorDash
• Chime
• Starbucks
• Disney+

Phone in SOS mode?

If you’re phone is on SOS mode, it’s likely caused by the AWS issue, as reported by Downdetector. To check your network status, head to Verizon’s official website.

Delta, United Airlines, Southwest impacts

Airline websites like Delta Airlines and United Airlines were impacted by Monday’s AWS outage, according to CNBC. Customers said they could not access flight check-in functions or their reservations. Other airline websites and app impacted were Southwest Airlines.

When will AWS incident be fixed?

It remains unclear when the AWS incident will be completely fixed, since apps and websites are intermittently still going down or not working as of Monday, Oct. 20. Amazon’s latest update at 11:04 a.m. ET indicated that they are trying to find the root cause of the incident, although are aware it’s within their web-based EC2 platform. At 10:29 a.m. ET, they said there were “early signs of recovery.” The latest AWS updates can be found on the AWS Health Dashboard.

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect