Netflix Went Down for Users Across the World in Mysterious Major Outage, Following Net Neutrality Repeal
Netflix viewers who were busy binge-watching their favorite shows had to step out and find something else to do as the major streaming platform went dark for several hours. This outage, the reason for which has not been made clear as of this time, suddenly came about in the wake of the official repeal of the Net Neutrality rules in the U.S.
It was not just in one region where users began to see errors as they tried to queue up their favorite shows, which surprised people as Netflix as an online service has proven itself to be very reliable when it comes to uptime. An outage map, as updated in real time by the website DownDetector.com, saw complaints of an outage clustered around the U.S. east coast, the UK, and Australia, along with parts of Asian and African regions.
In short, it was a global outage that affected users around the world. The errors appeared to have started coming up around 5 p.m. EDT.
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Netflix itself was quick to issue a statement that they were aware of the issue. "We are aware of members having trouble streaming on all devices. We are investigating the issue and appreciate your patience," the streaming service posted on its Netflixhelps Twitter account on Monday, June 11.
It's not just the streams that went down in this case, though. Even Netflix's status page, the same section that could have helped users know that the site is currently under maintenance, also failed to load as well, as the Independent pointed out.
Netflix quickly went back online right after, although, for some users, there were some lingering outages that went on for a couple of hours more. "The streaming issues we reported earlier have now been resolved. Thank you for your patience, and as always, happy streaming!" Netflix posted on the same day.
The company has not yet issued a statement explaining the reason behind the worldwide outage that happened earlier this week. There are some who noted the way the large-scale outage just happened to coincide with the official repeal of net neutrality by the FCC.
The net neutrality rules were known for the prohibitions they put in place, which were a check on the various ways Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can control and perhaps charge additional for the traffic going through their facilities, which include streaming traffic like the one generated by Netflix users.
With net neutrality laws repealed, ISPs can now offer companies to pay more so users can have faster access to their sites, and they are now also free to selectively slow down or "throttle" certain kinds of internet traffic as well.
