|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
San Francisco, CA — On February 20, 2026, Cloudflare suffered a major global service outage that lasted just over six hours, disrupting access to thousands of websites and applications worldwide.
What Happened
The outage was triggered by an internal network configuration change related to Cloudflare’s Bring Your Own IP (BYOIP) feature. The update unintentionally caused a large number of IP prefixes to be withdrawn from Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing, making affected services unreachable from the public internet.
Timeline
- 17:48 UTC — Network change deployed
- Shortly after — IP prefixes withdrawn globally
- ~6 hours later — Configuration reverted and routes restored
Technical Impact
- Around 1,100 IP prefixes were removed from global routing tables
- Affected services returned timeouts or failed connections
- Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver also experienced partial disruption
Response and Resolution
Cloudflare engineers identified the routing anomaly and rolled back the change to stop further withdrawals. Normal traffic flow resumed once BGP announcements were fully restored.
The company confirmed the incident was not caused by a cyberattack and stated that internal safeguards and change‑management processes are being reviewed to prevent recurrence.
Why It Matters
The incident highlights the internet’s growing dependence on large‑scale CDN and edge‑network providers. Even brief routing errors at this layer can cascade across thousands of unrelated services.
Official source: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-outage-february-20-2026/
Arsalan Malik is a passionate Software Engineer and the Founder of Makemychance.com. A proud CDAC-qualified developer, Arsalan specializes in full-stack web development, with expertise in technologies like Node.js, PHP, WordPress, React, and modern CSS frameworks.
He actively shares his knowledge and insights with the developer community on platforms like Dev.to and engages with professionals worldwide through LinkedIn.
Arsalan believes in building real-world projects that not only solve problems but also educate and empower users. His mission is to make technology simple, accessible, and impactful for everyone.
Join us on dev community
