As technology becomes more and more accessible, we have to remember that the Internet is not infinite. When we have our TV, smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop, watch, and cameras connected to the Internet, how much can the Internet actually handle? How much of our Internet usage is sustainable with today’s technology?

What caused the problem?

We found out on August 15, the day that servers all around the world reached capacity with how much traffic they can handle. Internet Service Providers around the world could not identify the issue, because their normal local network appeared to be fine, and it was outside networks that were actually experiencing slow load times and intermittent connectivity problems.

This caused a lot of confusion as to why customers couldn’t access the internet normally, and who was responsible. Internet services like email and web hosting, or Internet Service Providers? In the end, we were able to discover that the problem was caused by existing Internet technology reaching and far exceeding capacity for the amount of Internet traffic and data it was designed to support.

What does this mean for you?

Outages are predicted in the next weeks as companies and providers work to resolve this technological issue. While data centers around the world upgrade or revitalize their hardware you may experience random and intermittent outages with websites, emails and Internet connectivity in general.

The important thing to do is to be patient. This is a problem that goes beyond your Internet Service Provider, like AT&T or Comcast, and is a problem with independent data centers around the world.

You can expect slower than normal internet connections and less reliability as companies and data centers work to adjust to a new upgrade. Most users should expect normal conditions before the end of this week.