So, what happens when your site goes down, and it’s not your fault—or the fault of your website host—or your domain registrar? You might be facing an “upstream” outage. Nope, it’s not your webmaster gaslighting you. “Upstream” outages and connectivity issues, while relatively rare, do happen.
On Monday, October 20th, news broke that there was a major outage of part of Amazon’s AWS infrastructure, taking down many websites and app services, including airlines, streaming services and gaming platforms. The outage was centered at AWS’ northern Virginia U.S.-East-1 center, a huge part of their service network. This is a great example of an “upstream” outage.
What exactly is an “upstream” outage?
In the world of networking and computing, we often use the analogy of a river or a supply chain to describe the flow of services and data.
- You (the website owner) are at the “downstream” end, receiving services.
- The “upstream” refers to the providers or services that your website depends on to function, and there are many of them.
An upstream outage occurs when a critical third-party service your website relies on (like Amazon’s AWS) experiences an issue or failure, consequently impacting your site. It’s like the dam breaking or the river drying up miles before it reaches your property—you can’t access the water, even though your own plumbing is perfectly fine.
Common upstream dependencies
Your website is rarely a standalone entity. It likely relies on several key providers, any of which could cause an upstream outage:
| Upstream Dependency | What It Does | Potential Impact |
| Domain Name Registrar/DNS Provider | Directs users from your domain name to your server’s IP address. | Users can’t find your site or send you email (DNS resolution fails). |
| Web Hosting Provider | Provides the physical server space and resources where your website files live. | Your entire site goes offline or is inaccessible. |
| Content Delivery Network (CDN) | Caches your content geographically to speed up delivery. (e.g., Cloudflare, Akamai) | Images or assets fail to load, or the entire site becomes inaccessible if the CDN is a required proxy. |
| Third-Party APIs | Services for specific functions (e.g., payment processors, map services, analytics, external login tools). | Specific features fail (e.g., checkout breaks, login buttons don’t work). |
| Internet Service Providers (ISPs)/Backbone Carriers | The fundamental infrastructure that moves data across the internet. | Wide-ranging geographic outages or severe latency. |
Why upstream outages are tricky for website owners—and webmasters
- Lack of direct control: You can’t log in and fix the problem. You are dependent on the upstream provider’s staff and timeline.
- Delayed diagnosis: It often takes time to rule out all possibilities on your end before concluding that the issue is external. You might spend valuable time troubleshooting your own code or server first.
- Communication challenges: You have to rely on the provider’s status page or support channels for updates, and they may be overloaded.
What to do during an upstream outage
When your site is down and you suspect an external issue, follow these steps:
- Confirm the Source: Use external tools like ping tests, DNS lookups, and “Is It Down Right Now?” sites to confirm your site is genuinely unavailable to the public.
- Check Status Pages: Immediately check the official status pages of your primary providers (Host, CDN, DNS, major APIs). Most reputable services maintain a real-time status page. If the status page confirms an outage, stop troubleshooting your own system.
- Communicate externally…but carefully. Post a brief, professional update on social media acknowledging the issue. Never blame a provider explicitly; simply state you are aware of the issue and your service provider is working on a fix. This manages expectations without burning bridges.
- Monitor and wait: Set up alerts to notify you when the provider’s status changes. Use this downtime to review your disaster recovery plan or other necessary documentation.
Reducing future risk
While you can’t entirely prevent a provider from failing, you can build a more resilient website:
- Diversify providers (where practical): Use separate providers for critical services. For instance, have your domain registrar separate from your DNS provider, and your hosting separate from your CDN. This prevents a single point of failure.
- Implement redundancy: If you’re really dependent on your website, consider using multiple CDN providers or a multi-region hosting setup so that if one fails, traffic can be instantly rerouted to a backup. Note that this can be costly, and not worth it for small organizations. Also – no matter what you do, nothing is a 100% fix, it will just mitigate the effects if an outage occurs.
- Monitor overall site health: Work with a webmaster that will implement multiple monitoring tools and backups to keep tabs on your site’s status. Ongoing patterns in slowness and downtime can indicate a weakness in your website’s setup that can be addressed.
Upstream outages are a frustrating but inevitable part of life on the Internet. By understanding what they are and having a clear action plan, you can minimize downtime and maintain trust with your users. Prepare for the worst, but always hope the river keeps flowing!
Wondering how a webmaster can help monitor your website’s health? Check out my Help Desk service plans, and reach out anytime if I can assist!