Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ: AMZN) West Coast region suffered widespread interruptions on Dec. 15 that took down popular websites such as Amazon's video streaming platfrom Twitch. The interruption has prompted concerns over the concentrated market shares of internet providers.
The service outage struck late in the morning, with Twitch announcing temporary interruptions. Reports were received throughout the day, with services such as DoorDash (NYSE: DASH) and Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) having reported outages on DownDetector. Players of games such as League of Legends similarly reported server issues when logging in.
The service outage was resolved quickly, but the brief interruption was poorly timed, coming just a week after an AWS outage hit the east coast. The previous outage was much larger, taking down many workplace apps and even Amazon's main ecommerce storefront.
The string of Amazon outages, as well as last month's Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) outage, has prompted a great deal of concern from experts. The concentration of internet hosting among a handful of companies has left many questioning the reliability of internet access.
"There are many points of failure whose unavailability or suboptimal operation would affect the entire global experience of the internet," Assistant Professor Vahid Behzadan of the University of New Haven told CNBC. "The fact that we've had repeated outages in a short period of time is a cause for alarm."
Major internet outages have become more frequent and considerably more extensive in recent years. Last year, an AWS outage interrupted the services of Roku (NASDAQ: ROKU) and Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) and took down dozens of websites.
Concerns over the reliability of major internet providers are prompting many firms to invest in redundant systems and alternative data processing methods. One alternative currently making headways as of late is edge computing. Edge computing emphasizes installing servers closer to users rather than relying on distant, centralized data centers.