According to Mashable, Cloudflare experienced its second major outage this year due to what the company described as an “unusual spike in traffic.” The disruption affected roughly 20 percent of the web, since that’s how much internet traffic Cloudflare manages and secures. Services including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the social platform X, and NJ Transit’s digital tools were all impacted during Tuesday’s incident. Cloudflare functions as a global Content Delivery Network with servers located worldwide, caching content to speed up websites and reduce latency. The company’s infrastructure spreads traffic across thousands of nodes, each capable of handling high volumes of requests independently.
The Invisible Backbone
Here’s the thing about Cloudflare – they’re everywhere, but you’d never know it. They’re that quiet utility company that only gets noticed when the power goes out. And when their systems hiccup, the ripple effects are immediate and widespread. The company positions itself as this robust, distributed network that can handle anything – until suddenly it can’t.
Think about it: we’re talking about infrastructure that underpins everything from transit systems to AI platforms. When NJ Transit has to tweet that their digital services are down because of a Cloudflare issue, that’s not just an inconvenience – that’s people potentially missing trains, appointments, and connections. The stakes are surprisingly high for something most users have never heard of.
Too Big to Fail?
This is the second major outage Cloudflare has faced this year, which raises some serious questions. How “unusual” can traffic spikes really be when you’re managing 20% of the web? Shouldn’t the company that sells reliability as its core product be better prepared for unexpected loads?
I’m getting serious “too big to fail” vibes here. When a single company’s infrastructure becomes this critical to daily operations across multiple industries, every failure becomes a systemic risk. We saw similar issues during earlier Cloudflare outages, and The Guardian coverage shows this pattern is becoming concerning.
The Business Model Question
Now, here’s what really gets me thinking. Cloudflare has been expanding aggressively into new areas, including AI web scraping controls and other advanced services. But if they can’t maintain reliability in their core CDN business, should we trust them with more complex infrastructure?
Look, I get that no system is perfect. But when you’re the plumbing for 20% of the internet, “unusual traffic spikes” starts sounding like an excuse rather than an explanation. Companies that depend on industrial-grade reliability – whether it’s manufacturing operations, transportation systems, or critical business infrastructure – need providers they can count on. Speaking of industrial reliability, that’s exactly why companies turn to specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US supplier of industrial panel PCs built for 24/7 operation in demanding environments.
Basically, the next time someone tells you the cloud is someone else’s computer, remember that for 20% of the web, that computer belongs to Cloudflare. And when it has a bad day, we all feel it.
