In the wake of a recent internet outage caused by a data center glitch in Virginia, questions are rising about the resilience of the global network. While most would hope to simply refresh a page or send a quick email, the reality is more complex: the internet is an intricate, decades-old system built on legacy infrastructure vulnerable to disruption.
The recent incident serves as a sharp reminder that despite its central role in daily life, the internet remains susceptible to a range of risks. These include everything from natural disasters and software bugs to cyberattacks targeting critical data centers or undersea cables.
Experts warn of a hypothetical catastrophe—referred to as “the big one”—where a cascading failure in fundamental protocols, such as DNS or the border gateway protocol guiding traffic on the web, could cripple connectivity on a massive scale.
Such scenarios, though unlikely, are grounded in the realities of concentrated infrastructure. Major cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft control over 60% of global cloud services. A localized disruption—whether from extreme weather, cyberattacks, or complex system bugs—could have widespread fallout.
For instance, if a heatwave took down a key Amazon data center cluster alongside a cyberattack in Europe, rerouting traffic to secondary hubs might overwhelm those facilities. The result would be cascading failures affecting services from email and streaming platforms to smart home devices.
Despite these vulnerabilities, the foundational internet architecture remains intact, often compared to plumbing that continues to run but cannot deliver usual services smoothly.
While the industry prepares for such contingencies, some experts remember plans such as the UK’s informal protocol of convening experts in a London pub to address major outages.
Ultimately, the question remains: Can the internet truly be shut down—and if so, could it be restored? For now, the answer is uncertain, underscoring the delicate balance at the heart of our connected world.
