ISLAMABAD: The internet in Pakistan has been gradually deteriorating, and social networking sites have been going down in the entire country. A large number of users have stated that they are unable to use Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Users across the country have accused Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) of causing the slow internet speed that has made accessing social media platforms hardly possible. Downdetector, an online service that monitors disruptions, indicates that a large number of people have reported the difficulties they face with different internet service providers, like PTCL, and with social media platforms.
Details of the Disruptions
Facebook was the most affected site at Downdetector. The local time of the event was 10:33 PM on Thursday, and 64 people reported the issue. Instagram, in a similar way, suffered from a blackout, and 127 users reported that they were not able to use the platform at 10:22 PM.
The outages were pretty much the worst time, because the heavily-traffic social media were people’s main source of communication and information. As a result, a vast number of people were inconvenienced.
Before this event, there was a global internet disruption that was caused by a technical outage at Amazon’s cloud service, Amazon Web Services (AWS). The outage lasted for several hours and during this period, thousands of websites and apps across the globe, including those in Pakistan, were adversely affected.
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The root of the issue was a DNS (Domain Name System) problem. DNS is very important because it is the system that changes a website address to a digital IP address. According to the experts, this was not a cyberattack but a technical problem at one of Amazon’s data centers, where a very important part of the internet was temporarily put out of operations.
Tech disruptions have signalized the necessity of tech companies reinforcing their infrastructures to eliminate the risk of such broad troubles again. As the globe becomes progressively dependent upon digital services, the experts emphasize that these services should be made more resistant and secure for the prevention of future breakdowns.
