EXPLAINER: Just how vulnerable is the internet?

An outage at a little-known firm that knocked a lot of top internet destinations offline, disrupting business and leisure for untold millions globally, was quickly resolved Tuesday

BOSTON -- An outage at a little-known firm that speeds up access to websites knocked a lot of top internet destinations offline on Tuesday, disrupting business and leisure for untold millions globally. The problem was quickly resolved. The company, Fastly, blamed a configuration error in its technology. But the incident — Fastly's traffic dropped 75% for about an hour just as the U.S. East Coast was beginning to stir —raises questions about how vulnerable the global internet is to more serious disruption. WHAT'S A FASTLY? WHY DID ITS TECHNICAL PROBLEMS LEAD TO SO MANY OUTAGES? San Francisco-based Fastly isn't a household name, but its “edge server” computing technology is used by many of the world's most popular websites, such as The New York Times, Shopify, the Guardian, Ticketmaster, Pinterest, Etsy, Wayfair and Stripe. The British government is among its clients.