WhatsApp down for millions of users for over an hour Update: Now fixed
For nearly two hours, WhatsApp users were unable to send messages and media files. Users were also unable to make WhatsApp audio and video calls.
Highlights
Many users started facing issues with the WhatsApp mobile app and web at around 12:30 PM.
Downdetector pointed out that 69 per cent of users are facing issues with sending messages.
WhatsApp is now restored for users in India.
By Abhik Sengupta: WhatsApp services have been restored after a brief outage. For nearly two hours, the app was down for millions of users in India and worldwide. During the outage, users could not send messages and use services like WhatsApp audio and video calls. Soon after WhatsApp users started reporting problems online, Meta issued a statement and said the service would be restored soon. However, the exact cause of the outage still remains unclear.
What happened during the WhatsApp outage?
As per the outage tracker, Downdetector, many users started facing issues with the WhatsApp mobile app and web at around 12:30 PM today, October 25. At that time, over 2,000 users reported issues with the app on the website. Downdetector also pointed out that 69 per cent of users faced issues with sending messages, while 21 per cent of users faced server connection-related problems. Around 9 per cent of users were unable to use the app for unknown reasons.
WhatsApp parent Meta soon released a statement after the outage became more prominent in India and other countries. A spokesperson said, "We're aware that some people are currently having trouble sending messages and we're working to restore WhatsApp for everyone as quickly as possible."
Notably, WhatsApp sibling Instagram, Facebook, and the Messenger app under the Meta umbrella worked fine for users in India and elsewhere. Twitter was also abuzz with WhatsApp-related concerns. At the time of writing this article, WhatsAppDown was the trending hashtag.
Why was WhatsApp Down?
As mentioned, Meta is yet to clarify the cause of the outage. However, this is not the first time the platform has stopped working for millions of users.
Coincidentally, WhatsApp faced a major outage globally in October 2021. At that time, the company said that its services were down due to DNS failure. To put it simply, DNS translates human-readable texts (for instance Abhik or India Today) into raw computer-friendly codes and numeric IP addresses.
In technical terms, the company said last year, "Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centres caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centres communicate, bringing our services to a halt".
Therefore, the current outage could stem from a similar DNS-related issue. More details from WhatsApp are awaited.
Is WhatsApp fully restored?
Some users may still face issues with WhatsApp while sending messages or media files. However, it will be fixed very soon.
Meanwhile, notable WhatsApp tracker WABetaInfo points out that WhatsApp Business API is still down.
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Surya Grahan 2022