Cloudflare experienced a service disruption on 5 December that temporarily affected access to websites relying on its network infrastructure. The company said engineers implemented a fix and are monitoring systems, but many users reported continued instability. The incident follows a major outage on 18 November that affected global traffic flows and triggered questions about the resilience of core internet services.
Reports submitted to outage-tracking platforms showed that thousands of users in the United States encountered errors when visiting websites protected by Cloudflare. Users described connection failures, delayed page loading and domain name resolution issues. Website operators said the disruption affected content delivery, security tools and DNS services.
Cloudflare has not provided full technical details. The company confirmed that engineers identified the cause and applied corrective measures, but said monitoring would continue until network performance stabilises. As the situation remains active, the extent of residual impact is not yet clear.
The incident occurred less than three weeks after a widely reported outage caused by an internal configuration error in Cloudflare’s Bot Management system. That earlier disruption resulted from a file that exceeded expected limits, triggering failures across parts of the company’s global network. Cloudflare said the November outage was not related to a cyberattack and was the result of an internal software error.
Analysts noted that repeated disturbances in close succession show how critical single providers have become to the functioning of large parts of the internet. Cloudflare supports content delivery, security and DNS functions used by a broad range of websites. When the company experiences technical faults, disruptions can cascade quickly. Specialists said this highlights the need for redundancy planning among organisations that depend heavily on third-party infrastructure.
Website operators using Cloudflare services have been advised to monitor their platforms closely and review their own failover arrangements. Multi-provider DNS setups and diversified content delivery arrangements can reduce dependency on a single vendor. Security specialists also recommend clear procedures for responding to upstream outages, including communication plans for users.
Cloudflare said it will release additional information once engineers complete the review of the incident. Until the company publishes fuller details, analysts expect continued scrutiny of network behaviour to determine whether residual issues persist.