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Outage Hits Discord, Large Swath of the Web Due to Error At Cloudflare

'It was not as a result of an attack,' Cloudflare said. 'It appears a router on our global backbone announced bad routes and caused some portions of the network to not be available.'

Michael Kan
 & Michael Kan Principal Reporter

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Access to Discord, Riot Games, and numerous other websites briefly went down on Friday due to an error at web infrastructure provider Cloudflare. 

The outage began around 5:15 pm EST when attempts to connect to the affected web properties failed to reach the correct IP addresses. Browsers showed the error involved the domain name system (DNS), which acts as the phone book for the internet.

Cloudflare, which serves 26 million sites and speeds up access to web content, is indicating the problem had something to do with the company’s DNS resolver, which helps ferry website lookups to the correct IP address. 

'It was not as a result of an attack," Cloudflare said. "It appears a router on our global backbone announced bad routes and caused some portions of the network to not be available."

The outage affected 12 different Cloudflare data centers. However, the company has identified the problem and is currently implementing a fix. 

Discord added that the outage appeared to be an “upstream internet issue.” “We've got all engineers on deck investigating the issue,” the popular gaming chat platform said in a tweet. 

PCMag was among the websites that briefly went down, which also included FBI.gov, Mashable.com and even Downdetector.com, a real-time outage monitoring website. But at about 5:38 pm EST the sites appeared to all go back up. 

Nevertheless, Cloudflare is warning that customers in certain regions may still face some connection errors as it tries to fully patch the problem. The company has a dedicated webpage that’ll provide updates on the situation.

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About Our Expert

Michael Kan

Michael Kan

Principal Reporter

My Experience

I've been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I'm currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country's technology sector.

Since 2020, I've covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I've combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink's cellular service.

I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.

I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I'm now following how the AI-driven memory shortage is impacting the entire consumer electronics market. I'm always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.

The Best Tech I've Had:

  • My first video game console: a Nintendo Famicom
  • I loved my Sega Saturn despite PlayStation's popularity.
  • The iPod Video I received as a gift in college
  • Xbox 360 FTW
  • The Galaxy Nexus was the first smartphone I was proud to own.
  • The PC desktop I built in 2013, which still works to this day.

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