A Cloudflare issue is breaking websites for some users

Update 7:57 p.m. ET: The issue has been solved, and Cloudflare’s status page says that all systems are operational.

If you’ve noticed some internet slowdowns or trouble reaching websites tonight, you’re not alone. Cloudflare has confirmed an issue affecting its popular 1.1.1.1 public DNS resolver, which many people rely on for fast and private internet browsing.

What’s going on?

The company first acknowledged the problem at 22:13 UTC, and began rolling out a fix just minutes later. According to Cloudflare, the issue only affects users relying on 1.1.1.1. Their Gateway and Authoritative DNS services are still working as expected.

Many users have been turning to DownDetector to report outages on their favorite websites and services, unaware that the origin of the issue is in CloudFlare’s structure. In the last half hour, there has been a spike in reports for many websites and services, though they should probably be fully accessible if you’re not relying on Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS.

Until everything’s fully resolved, Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS users might run into websites failing to load or taking longer than usual. Cloudflare is posting updates on its status page, and things should stabilize soon.

We’ll keep an eye on the situation and update this post as more information becomes available, or when the issue is fully resolved.