Understanding the Internet Outages Map
What is the Internet Outages Map?
The Internet Outages Map is a graphical representation of network and application “outage” events (service disruptions) within service providers. The map identifies the provider, location, duration, and scale of detected outages based on telemetry collected from thousands of vantage points located around the globe. The map is updated every 5 minutes and shows ongoing and recently detected outages. (If you need info on earlier incidents, see the Internet Outages Timeline for a look at some of the notable outages from the last year.)
Where does outage data come from?
ThousandEyes agents located across the Internet perform billions of measurements each day, yielding a massive data set that includes network interface and application server-level information on when and where network traffic is disrupted and applications are unavailable.
How is it different from other outage detection websites?
Other outage detection sites like Downdetector are based on crowdsourced user sentiment, which can be inaccurate or misleading. For example, users can easily report when they’re experiencing the impacts of an outage, not necessarily what the cause of the outage is, leading to potential misdiagnosis and blame assigned to the wrong application or network provider.
What do “server” and “interface” indicate on the map?
A “server” is a computing device that is used to serve content for websites and web applications. It is part of an application’s infrastructure and relates to an application outage and its scale. An “interface” in the context of the outage map is an interface on a router. It is part of a network’s infrastructure and relates to a network outage and its scale.
What applications are tracked for outages?
The Outage Map covers approximately 129 business-critical SaaS applications, including some of the most popular productivity, sales and marketing, developer tools, HR, social media and eCommerce applications most often monitored by enterprise organizations. We will be expanding the catalog with additional applications over time, so be sure to check back often. Current applications in the catalog include:
What networks are tracked for outages?
Internet Insights reports outages detected in providers included in the Internet Insights catalog, which includes top ISPs (Tier-1/2/3), and top cloud networks, as well as edge service networks like CDNs, DNS, and SECaaS covered by the ThousandEyes collective intelligence dataset. We continuously expand the catalog with additional providers over time.
Understanding Application Outages
What is considered an application outage?
When an application is under duress or is unavailable due to network, application, or other service failures, application servers may not be able to successfully respond to requests from users. When multiple global vantage points fail to receive a response from an application server after 5 seconds or receive an error message, the application is considered to be unavailable and experiencing an “outage” event from the standpoint of users in impacted locations.
Application outages depicted on the map may be caused by an issue with the application provider (either software or infrastructure related), or may be due to a third-party outside of the provider preventing reachability of the application. The outage map does not report on performance-related issues within applications. For example, an application may be running very slowly or some or all of its features may be unusable, but its servers are reachable and responsive. In that case, it would not be categorized as an “outage” incident and would not appear on the map.
Details on the underlying issue for each detected application outage are available via ThousandEyes Internet Insights subscription service.
What thresholds are in place for reporting an application outage on the Outage Map?
Outages that last less than five minutes and involve fewer than 5 servers are not reported on the Outage Map. They are, however, reported in the paid ThousandEyes Internet Insights subscription service. Learn more about Internet Insights here.
Why don’t I see an application outage that has been reported by users and/or the application provider?
There are a few reasons this might happen. First, it may be that the application is not one of the approximately 129 popular SaaS providers currently being tracked. Second, it may not have met the thresholds defined above in terms of duration or number of servers affected. Third, the outage could be impacting the useability of an application or some application service. For example, an authentication service issue may prevent users from logging in or prevent some action within the application due to a disruption in the application’s process flow. These issues would not be reported on the outage map. Finally, it may be that users are mis-reporting an application outage when that is a symptom, rather than the cause. For example, an ISP in the service delivery path may be experiencing an issue that is preventing users from accessing an application. A user may report the application to be impacted, when in reality, the application is working fine, it’s the service provider delivering the application that is experiencing an issue.
How can I tell on the map if a network is what is impacting the application experience?
This capability is only available for ThousandEyes customers. Learn more about Internet Insights here.
How do I understand where an outage is taking place?
Application outages are highlighted on the world map using purple dots. Hover over each dot to determine which applications are experiencing outages in those regions.
How do I understand if the outage is significant or not?
Significance is usually determined by length of time and number of servers / locations impacted. Outages of greater magnitude are also displayed as larger objects on the outage map, along with the number of affected locations. The higher those numbers are, the more users that are potentially affected by the disruption.
Can I submit a request for an application I care about to be tracked?
ThousandEyes customers can submit a request via support, using the ‘I wish’ feature in the product, or directly to your account manager. We are always interested in hearing about additional applications that our customers and visitors would benefit from having available in the Internet Insights catalog.
What can I do with this data?
Share the outage event with others who might be impacted by the outage using the embedded “Share” button on each outage card. You can alert the provider to the outage if you’re unsure they’re already aware by sharing a direct link to the map. Customers of ThousandEyes Internet Insights can be automatically alerted of outage events, enabling them to proactively alert their workforce of any business-disrupting outages to avoid an unnecessary flood of helpdesk tickets.
Understanding Network Outages
What is considered a network outage?
The Internet Outages Map leverages aggregated network telemetry data from ThousandEyes' global network to detect network outage events taking place across ISP, public cloud and edge service networks like CDNs, DNS and SECaaS.
What thresholds are in place for reporting an application outage on the Outage Map?
Outages that last fewer than five minutes are not reported on the Outage Map. They are, however, reported in the paid ThousandEyes Internet Insights subscription service. Learn more about Internet Insights here.
How do I understand where an outage is taking place?
Network outages are highlighted on the world map using red dots. Hover over each dot to determine which networks are experiencing outages in those regions.
How do I understand if the outage is significant or not?
Significance is usually determined by length of time and number of interfaces / locations impacted. The higher those numbers are, the more users that are potentially affected by the disruption.
Why is that timeline “spike” in the same spot for so many outages?
This could mean that the same outage is affecting multiple providers at the same time.
What can I do with this data?
Share the outage event with others who might be impacted by the outage using the embedded “Share” button on each outage card. You can alert the provider to the outage if you’re unsure they’re already aware by sharing a direct link to the map. Customers of ThousandEyes Internet Insights can be automatically alerted of outage events, enabling them to proactively alert their workforce of any business-disrupting outages to avoid an unnecessary flood of helpdesk tickets.