Zoom’s video calling service seems to be experiencing a major global disruption, leaving thousands of users around the world unable to join conferences.
The problems started around 15:17 BST (10.17 EDT) and continue, according to the Downdetector website, which monitors website interruptions.
Users in the United States and the United Kingdom report that they cannot join or start conferences through the website or application.
The company’s service status page reports “degraded performance” for users of its web portal.
“We have received reports from a subgroup of users who do not have access to the Zoom web portal. We are currently investigating and will provide updates when we have them, “said a note on the site, published at 15:38 BST (10:38 EDT).
Another update, published at 15.59 BST, reads: “We’ve fixed an issue that is causing a subset of users to not be able to access the Zoom web portal. We will continue to monitor and provide updates as we have them. “
The break comes as millions of Britons have been forced to work from home due to strikes by national railways.
Zoom’s video calling service seems to be experiencing a major global disruption, leaving thousands of users around the world unable to join conferences
Downdetector UK tweeted the news that Zoom was experiencing problems through its official Twitter account
The problems started around 15:17 BST and continue, according to the Downdetector website, which monitors website interruptions
Thousands in the UK say they can’t join or start conferences through the website or app.
The US also seems to be experiencing problems, with New York, Chicago, Washington and Boston highlighted as hotspots on the Downdetector map
The numbers are much higher in the United States, with more than 13,500 problem reports
Zoom users in both the UK and the US have turned to Twitter to express their disappointment (and in some cases joy) at the break.
“The scale has been reduced and honestly we just have to take a day off,” one user wrote.
“What a great way to get started in the morning with scale reduction,” wrote a US-based user with a picture of a smiling face upside down.
“Reducing the scale just in time for staff meetings at 9:00 am is a mood,” wrote another.
However, some of the messages posted on the social network showed jubilation.
“Reducing the scale on the day you have an appointment is the closest thing an adult will get to a snowy day,” one user wrote.
Zoom users in both the UK and the US have turned to Twitter to express their disappointment (and in some cases the pleasure) of the break-up.
It is unclear what is causing the problem and whether it is related to other widespread Internet outages affecting websites and services, including Outlook and Cloudflare, a content delivery network on which much of the Internet relies.
The Microsoft Outlook e-mail platform was affected by a problem with the service this afternoon, making it inaccessible to some users.
The company confirmed the problem and said it is working to fix it, and there are currently no other services that appear to be affected.
According to Microsoft’s own service status website, some Outlook users “may not be able to access their mailboxes by any method of connection” and may experience “delays in sending, receiving, or accessing e-mail messages.” .
The Microsoft Outlook e-mail platform is affected by issues with the service, making it inaccessible to some users
According to the Down Detector website monitoring service, affected users see messages telling them that they have failed to connect to a server and are struggling to connect to the service from various devices.
What is a content delivery network?
The Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a platform of servers that helps minimize delays in loading content on a web page.
Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at ESET, explains: “Websites are located all over the world, so content delivery networks are arranged to distribute data evenly, reducing the physical distance between where they are actually stored and the end user. This helps users around the world to see the same high-quality information and content without delay or slow loading times. ‘
More than half of Internet traffic is served by CDN, according to Internet services company Akamai.
In a statement on the website, Microsoft said: “We continue to analyze telemetry to monitor services to identify the next steps to troubleshoot to mitigate the impact.”
The company added that the problem is specific to some consumers in Europe.
In an update, Microsoft said: “We have identified that our traffic management infrastructure is not working as expected.
“We have successfully targeted traffic to an alternative method of traffic management and are seeing an improvement in the availability of the service once this process is complete.
“We continue to monitor the availability of the service as it improves as we identify the root cause.”
According to Down Detector, affected users see messages telling them that they have failed to connect to a server and are struggling to connect to the service from various devices.
The monitoring service showed that it started receiving reports of problems around 9 am on Tuesday.
Many frustrated Outlook users also turned to Twitter to discuss the outage.
One user wrote: “I almost threw my laptop out the window before I realized that Outlook emails didn’t work.”
Another tweeted: “The service does not work for more than three hours and almost all our mailboxes. This is incredibly bad.
And one said, “Come on, Microsoft. This should not be allowed. Our entire company is crippled without the use of email and does not work for hours. Where is the backup plan!?!? # Funny. ‘
These outages don’t seem to be related to a problem at cloud infrastructure company Cloudflare.
Many frustrated Outlook users also turned to Twitter to discuss the break today
A major disruption to Cloudflare caused hundreds of websites on the Internet to shut down and return a “500 internal server error” message this morning.
The Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a distributed group of servers around the world that work in unison. Websites use these CDNs to deliver cloud content safely and as quickly as possible.
Cloudflare is the most popular content delivery network with a difference.
A major crash in Cloudflare has caused hundreds of websites on the Internet to stop working and return the message “500 internal server errors” this morning
Websites affected by the 7:34 BST outage this morning include Discord, Shopify, Fitbit, Peloton, Grindr, Ring, bet365, Google, NordVPN, JustEat and Ladbrokes, according to Downdetector, which monitors website outages.
Cloudflare confirmed the problem in updating its official Twitter account.
“The Cloudflare team is aware of current service issues and is working to resolve them as soon as possible,” the statement said.
The company applied a correction at 08.20 BST and published an update on its service status page at 09:06 BST, claiming it had resolved the issue.
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