Global Internet Disruption as Cloudflare Suffers Major Outage
Internet users worldwide faced widespread disruption on Tuesday, 18 November 2025, as a significant outage at internet infrastructure giant Cloudflare rendered popular platforms including X (formerly Twitter) and ChatGPT inaccessible. The technical problems left users confronting error messages and unable to load websites, sparking frustration across the globe.
Root Cause and Resolution Timeline
According to a Cloudflare spokesperson, the massive outage was triggered by a spike in unusual traffic targeting one of its core services. The incident began at 11:20 UTC, creating a cascade of failures.
In a subsequent update, the company's chief technology officer provided a clear timeline for the resolution. The primary impact on traffic flowing through Cloudflare's network was addressed by approximately 14:30 UTC. However, the company noted that additional work was required to fully restore its control plane, which includes the customer dashboard and configuration APIs.
The CTO confirmed, "The control plane should now be fully available. We are monitoring those services and continuing to ensure that everything is fully operational."
Looking Forward: A Promise to Prevent Recurrence
In the wake of the incident, Cloudflare has made a firm commitment to its users. The company has vowed "to make sure this never happens again" and has promised a thorough public review of the event.
The CTO's statement concluded, "Again, we plan to share a complete walkthrough of what went wrong today in a couple of hours and how we plan to make sure this never happens again." This post-mortem analysis is anticipated to provide critical insights into the vulnerabilities exposed by the unusual traffic spike and the steps being taken to bolster network resilience against similar future events.
