Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are down worldwide: “Ver…
Major websites and apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are experiencing problems worldwide on Monday evening. There are thousands of reports of users who cannot use the services. They say they are working on a solution.
Those who look for it to open Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger – which on Monday evening hardly any of many even succeed in reports that completely and innovatively do not work. Thousands of users have already reported it on Twitter and other problem reporting websites, such as DownDetector.
It is not clear what is going on and how quickly everything will be resolved. The services have through their accounts on Twitter and there know that they are aware of the storage but cannot yet say how long it will last. “We work hard there,” they write, and they blame themselves for the problems. Meanwhile, the hashtag #instagramdown is trending on Twitter, as disgruntled users of Facebook and Instagram are now flocking to it.
DNS problem
According to technology expert Pieterjan Van Leemputten of Datanews, it is a DNS problem. DNS (Domain name system, nvdr) is the system that ensures that you end up on the website that you type in your browser, or that your app loads as soon as you open it. “DNS ensures that you end up in the right place on the internet,” says Van Leemputten. “A phone book actually.”
There are hundreds of servers worldwide, but major players such as Facebook and Google have DNS under their own management. Which is immediately clear why in this case it is Facebook that does not work Twitter that is separate from it. “It’s speculation, but I suspect a bug has crept into the underlying code in that DNS due to an update of a change that’s going on,” says Van Leemputten. “At Facebook, DNS is very complex due to the size and number of accounts, and that may explain why it takes so long.”
Such a mistake can be very banal, says the expert. “That could be a space in a place where it doesn’t belong. But of course you have to find them.” In any case, an attack from outside does not appear to be an issue.
In recent months, there have been problems with many large sites and apps, such as Facebook and Instagram. It was at least half an hour more before those were resolved, but Monday night’s storage has already spent more than two hours.