The AWS outage that took down Ring, Alexa, and Disney+ is slowly ending
Ring ring, no one's home.
- Amazon Web Services, known as AWS, is experiencing an outage.
- The outage started spiking around 11:20 am Eastern Time.
- Ring, Alexa, iRobot, Disney+, Venmo, Prime Video, Prime Music, and many other services that rely on Amazon's cloud systems were affected.
Update at 8:20 pm ET: Services are slowly being restored. At this time, it appears that most services are back and operational, although some apps may experience longer than usual load times.
Earlier today, AWS - that's Amazon Web Services, or Amazon's massive cloud system - began experiencing connectivity issues with servers located in the East Region, which is located in Virginia. Any services that utilize servers in this region will likely continue to experience issues until the connectivity issues have been resolved. Richard Rocha, an Amazon spokesperson, had this to say about the outage:
"There is an AWS service event in the US-East Region (Virginia) affecting Amazon Operations and other customers with resources running from this region. The AWS team is working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible."
The outage has affected many web services throughout the day, including Disney Plus, popular payment app Venmo, Netflix, smart home apps like iRobot and Amazon Alexa, and even games like League of Legends, Valorant, and Population: One. Most Amazon services like Prime Music and Prime Video were down during the outage, and customers were even unable to order items off Amazon during parts of the outage.
Originally, it was thought that Ring's cloud services were only affected, as Ring Video Doorbell customers reported that they were unable to access the Ring app at all. That means customers weren't able to view any camera feeds or manage their Ring Alarm. While Ring Alarm Pro allows cameras to store locally on an SD card, customers couldn't access this data because they couldn't access the Ring app at all.
Right now, the best way to keep track of Ring's service is via the Ring service dashboard, which details specific Ring services that aren't working. Most other apps and services that rely on Amazon's systems have been restored to working order, but plenty of apps and services are still experiencing some sort of service-related issues.