Earlier this week, Amazon Web Services suffered a serious outage that took down a good portion of the internet, with major disruptions to apps like Snapchat, Strava, and Venmo. The outage caused by a Domain Name System resolution issue lasted multiple hours, as some reports claimed it affected at least 1,000 different apps and services.
We tracked some of the larger services that were disrupted, including Zoom, Roku, and Ring cameras. But the outage affected others, too. After all, AWS is a major backbone of the internet, covering 30% of the cloud industry according to ABC News. So that means a lot of devices and services are vulnerable when outages hit, especially some that are quite surprising.
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Smart beds
(Image credit: Eight Sleep)
Any product you can think of probably has a smart version at this point. Eight Sleep makes smart mattresses, and it’s normally among our best smart beds picks.
However, the AWS outage managed to cause problems for the company’s $2000+ “Pod” mattress covers, as reported by Dexerto. Instead of totally shutting down, the covers had no off mode, leaving some stuck heating up or in odd positions.
The Pods have on-device buttons for controlling temperatures without your phone, but it does require an internet connection to make the adjustments. With a lack of an offline mode, the temperature could not be lowered or recline modes stopped.
Eight Sleeps’ CEO Matteo Franeschetti posted: “We will work the whole night+24/7 to build an outage mode so the problem will be fixed extremely quickly.”
On October 22, the company introduced a new “Backup Mode” that is supposed to allow you to make changes via Bluetooth in the Eight Sleep app if an outage is detected.
The Premier League
(Image credit: Logos: West Ham United/Brentford/Creative Commons / Stadium: Matt McNulty – Manchester City/Manchester City FC via Getty Images)
Surprisingly, even major sporting leagues like the English Premier League were hit by the AWS outage.
As seen by The Mirror, England’s top league confirmed that a match between West Ham United and Brentford had to be played initially without the use of semi-automated offside technology, which was only implemented league-wide this past April. Instead, the refs relied on virtual offside lines, which had been used in previous seasons.
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“Due to the impact of today’s global AWS outage, this evening’s match will now begin without the use of Semi-Automated Offside Technology (SAOT),” the Premier League Match Centre X account posted on Monday.
During the second half of the match, SOAT returned. The technology is supposed to place digital offside lines using optical player tracking and produces the graphics showing offside during broadcasts and in stadiums.
Apparently, the system migrated to AWS in 2024.
Peloton
(Image credit: Peloton)
At the same time, Peloton reported that its services were impacted by the outage. Peloton subscribers were unable to access classes or even search for them. Peloton’s services went up and down where it was confirmed the Studio platform for booking classes was intermittently available.
While the AWS outage was mostly over by 3 pm Pacific. Peloton didn’t mark its outage as resolved until October 21, though the company reported its services were “back in an operational state” by 4 p.m. ET on October 20.
Airlines
(Image credit: Future)
Some airlines were hit by the AWS outage though it wasn’t nearly as bad as the massive Crowdstrike outage that took down thousands of Windows systems offline in July 2024.
For the most part, it appears the AWS outage only affected websites for United and Delta which led to fliers being unable to check in or check ETAs for their flights using the company sites.
A United Spokesperson told customers on X that it experienced “a system glitch affecting our online tools.” The company later told CNBC that some of its internal systems were affected by the outage.
Delta confirmed that it had some minor delays but also told CNBC that the company did not “anticipate any significant customer impact moving forward as a result of this event.”
The issues are compounded by the ongoing US government shutdown, which has caused air traffic controller shortages that are delaying thousands of flights.
LitteRobot
(Image credit: Whisper)
One thing you don’t want taken out by a global outage is your cat’s litter box. Unfortunately, owners of the automated Litter Robot 4 litter box discovered that the AWS outage gummed up the works for the cat box.
As one Redditor noted, “It’s wild to me that I am required to rely on a random server somewhere just to control the litter box on my own network. C’mon whisker, give us the option for local control.”
The company acknowledged the problems on X in a response to a complaint.
“Some Whisker app functionality may be impacted by a brief system outage. We’re monitoring this situation closely,” the company account posted. “All Litter-Robot functions will perform as they should, but you may see a delay in Whisker app related activities and status updates.”
Unlike the Peloton or smart beds, the Litter Robot still worked as a functional place for cats to do their business — it just didn’t clean up or respond to app requests.
So, in one way, the $700 device did its job.
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