Cloudflare Global Network Hit by Major Service Disruption
Cloudflare, one of the world's largest content delivery networks and cybersecurity providers, experienced a significant service degradation on November 18, 2025, affecting multiple services across its global infrastructure. The incident, which began around 11:48 UTC, impacted Cloudflare Access, WARP, and various application services, causing intermittent connectivity issues for users worldwide.
Timeline of the Incident
The service disruption was first identified when Cloudflare began investigating an internal service degradation. 'Cloudflare is experiencing an internal service degradation. Some services may be intermittently impacted. We are focused on restoring service,' the company stated in its initial status update. Throughout the day, the company provided regular updates as they worked to identify and resolve the underlying issues.
By 13:09 UTC, Cloudflare had identified the root cause and was implementing a fix. 'The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented,' the company announced. During remediation efforts, the company temporarily disabled WARP access in London to stabilize the network, causing connectivity failures for users in that region attempting to access the internet via WARP.
Recovery Progress
By 13:13 UTC, Cloudflare reported that changes had allowed Cloudflare Access and WARP to recover, with error levels returning to pre-incident rates. The company re-enabled WARP access in London and continued working to restore other affected services. 'We have made changes that have allowed Cloudflare Access and WARP to recover. Error levels for Access and WARP users have returned to pre-incident rates,' Cloudflare confirmed in their update.
However, as of 13:35 UTC, the company was still working on restoring service for application services customers, indicating that the full recovery process was ongoing. The incident occurred alongside multiple scheduled maintenance events across various data centers worldwide, including locations in Santiago, Tahiti, Los Angeles, and Atlanta.
Broader Impact and Context
Cloudflare's services are used by approximately 19.3% of all websites on the internet, according to W3Techs data from January 2025. The company's infrastructure handles an average of 45 million HTTP requests per second, making any service disruption potentially impactful for millions of users and businesses globally.
This incident follows a pattern of similar disruptions in the content delivery network industry, highlighting the critical nature of these services for modern internet infrastructure. Cloudflare has built its reputation on reliability and security, with services including DDoS mitigation, web application firewall, and content delivery across its global network of data centers.
The company, founded in 2009 and publicly traded since 2019, has grown to become a fundamental component of internet infrastructure. Its status page and notification systems allowed customers to stay informed throughout the incident, with the company providing regular updates via email, SMS, and webhooks for subscribed users.
Industry Perspective
Network infrastructure experts note that such incidents, while disruptive, are part of the complex nature of maintaining global internet services. 'Even the most robust networks can experience unexpected issues, and what matters most is how quickly and transparently companies respond to these challenges,' said a cybersecurity analyst familiar with Cloudflare's operations.
Cloudflare's incident response demonstrated the company's commitment to transparency, with detailed status updates and clear communication about the steps being taken to resolve the issues. The company's ability to quickly identify the problem and implement fixes helped minimize the overall impact on users.
As internet infrastructure continues to evolve and become more complex, incidents like this serve as reminders of the importance of redundancy, monitoring, and rapid response capabilities in maintaining reliable global services.