A number of apps stopped working. What really happened?

The situation was well described by the head of the rival Cloudflour technology company, which was probably relieved to notice that today's problem had nothing to do with it, writes the BBC.

Among the affected platforms were services known as Snapchat and Reddit, banks such as Lloyds and Halifax, and games like Roblox and Fornice.

The AWS provides basic infrastructure for about a third of the internet, providing data storage, database management and accounting power.

This allows companies to avoid maintaining their expensive systems, while at the same time directing traffic to their platforms.

Their main message to customers is simple: “Allow us to care for your business's computer needs. ”

However, the cause of the problem was a very common mistake: a problem with the Domain System (DNS).

Technology industry experts would probably ignore it, since the phrase “is always DNS!” is often heard when these types of interruptions occur.

DNS works as a kind of Internet map.

When a user clicks on an app or connections, his device sends a request to connect.

The AWS has figuratively lost that map of services such as Snapchat and Canva still existed, but the system did not know how to direct traffic.

Why did the decline have such an impact?

Such mistakes may occur for a number of reasons, from maintenance problems or server failures to human errors, such as the wrong configuration of the system.

In extreme cases, there may also be a cyberattack, although there is no evidence of that.

The AWS confirmed that the incident occurred at its database in Northern Virginia, which is also the oldest and largest.

Many experts agreed that the incident is a clear example of the risks of supporting only a service provider.

AWS is a giant on which millions of companies depend, and the problem is there are not many real alternatives.

There are only two top competitors on the market, both American giants: Microsoft's Azure and Google's Culud Platform.

The smaller rivals include China's IBM and Alibaba, and last year's mother-in-law supermarket company, Lidl launched a European competitor named Stacket.

Because of this dominant position, more and more questions are being asked whether the United Kingdom and Europe should build their infrastructure to reduce dependence on US Cloud services, though some believe it is already too late.