Many popular websites fell offline today in a widespread outage of service, reports the BBC. Visitors attempting to reach some sites received DNS errors, meaning their requests could not reach the websites. Affected services included Airbnb, UPS, HSBC bank, British Airways, and the PlayStation network used for online games. Internet outage monitoring platform DownDetector reported thousands of problems from its users across dozens of platforms. As some websites began to appear again for users in Europe and the U.S., others in Asian nations continued to report problems. DNS (Domain Name System) turns human-readable web addresses into addresses that point to a computer server somewhere online. Disruptions often mean that a web browser cannot find the content it is looking for. The disruption is the second widespread outage in two months.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57929544
