On Wednesday, Reddit experienced a significant global outage, leaving millions of users unable to access the platform for several hours.
Story Summary:
- Reddit faced a global outage on Wednesday due to a bug in a recent update, rendering the platform inaccessible for hours.
- Users encountered an “Upstream connect error,” signalling a failure in the platform’s connection with its Content Delivery Network (CDN).
- Services were fully restored by 19:35 EST (02:35 SAST), and Reddit has pledged to monitor its systems to prevent future incidents.
Reddit issues latest update on global outage
Reports of connectivity issues began surfacing just before 15:00 EST (22:00 SAST), and by 19:35 EST (02:35 SAST), Reddit announced that the issue had been resolved.
Reddit attributed the outage to a bug in a recent update, which disrupted both desktop and mobile app access.
A company spokesperson confirmed that the platform was back online and fully operational. “We’re up and running on all fronts,” the spokesperson said, emphasising that the issue had been addressed and was being closely monitored.
Earlier, the platform acknowledged the outage on social media, stating, “Yes. We’re working on it.”
This statement was posted as Reddit engineers investigated the incident, which was described as a case of “degraded performance.”
What caused the Reddit outage?
The incident was marked by an error message encountered by users attempting to access the site:
“Upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. Reset reason: connection failure.”
This technical issue points to a failure in the connection between Reddit’s servers and its Content Delivery Network (CDN).
CDNs are essential for distributing website content to users across the globe, and a disruption in this network can severely impact accessibility.
According to industry experts, such connectivity issues can arise due to:
- Server Overload: A spike in traffic overwhelming servers.
- Backbone Outage: Disruption in the core infrastructure of the internet supporting Reddit’s services.
- Internal Misconfiguration: Errors during system updates or maintenance can result in widespread failures, as Reddit’s engineers later identified in their root cause analysis.
User impact and Reddit’s recovery
During the downtime, frustrated users flocked to platforms like X (formerly Twitter) to express concerns and seek updates.
Reports from DownDetector highlighted that major cities, including New York, San Francisco, Detroit, and Seattle, were among the hardest hit by the outage.
By 17:21 EST (00:21 SAST) Eastern, partial restoration of services was observed, with some features such as the Popular subreddit coming back online.
However, intermittent slowdowns and sporadic outages persisted until the issue was fully resolved hours later.
This marks the second significant performance issue for Reddit in recent months.
On 5 November 2024, the platform experienced a similar “degraded performance” incident, which was also resolved after hours of investigation.
