Numerous websites, including those of the Brabant newspapers, suffered outages on Thursday evening. The problem was resolved within forty-five minutes. A technical malfunction at the American tech company Akamai caused it.
Companies like Akamai are a kind of traffic controller. They ensure that people who type in an Internet address end up on the systems that belong to that address. The digital world depends on a few such companies.
Worldwide disruption
The sites of the Algemeen Dagblad (AD), the Volkskrant, the police, supermarket group Jumbo in Veghel, the Rabobank, ING, and Albert Heijn were also down. Like the AD, the Brabant newspapers fall under the DPG publishing group.They quickly reported on Twitter that the sites were inaccessible due to a technical problem.
Fix
By 7 p.m. Thursday night, Akamai reported that it had implemented a “fix,”. A software update apparently caused the problem. The company says it is going to take a critical look at the way the updates are implemented.
Source: omroepbrabant.nl
Translation: Chaitali Sengupta
