From the ARPANET collapse of 1980 to the submarine cable cuts of today — a chronological record of the incidents that shaped how we build resilient networks.
Decades of network failures reveal recurring themes in how the internet breaks.
Every major outage leaves behind lessons for building more resilient systems.
From the AT&T crash of 1990 to the Facebook outage of 2021, misconfigurations and operational errors cause more outages than any other factor. The complexity of modern networks means a single typo can cascade globally.
The Border Gateway Protocol that routes traffic between networks was designed in an era of implicit trust. Decades later, route leaks and hijacks continue because adoption of security measures like RPKI remains incomplete.
Submarine cables carry 95% of intercontinental data, yet they're vulnerable to anchors, earthquakes, and increasingly, deliberate interference. Geographic chokepoints like the Red Sea remain critical points of failure.
When AWS us-east-1 goes down, half the internet feels it. When Cloudflare has an issue, millions of websites become unreachable. The efficiency gains from centralization come with outsized failure modes.
Latency Global monitors your services from 70+ global locations. Get alerted when issues arise — not when customers complain.
Start Free Trial$5/month • No contracts • Cancel anytime