On 18 November 2025, Cloudflare, a major player in global internet infrastructure, used by around 20 % of websites worldwide, experienced a major outage.
For hours many websites, apps and services were unreachable, simply because a configuration error caused cascading failures across Cloudflare’s network
This incident offers a powerful lesson for any business that depends on connectivity and uptime: relying on a single provider, no matter how strong it seems, can leave you vulnerable.
What went wrong
Here are the facts of the incident (in brief):
- The root cause was not a cyber-attack, but an internal technical issue: a routine database permission change caused a file (used in Cloudflare’s Bot Management system) to double in size, beyond the limits built into the system
- That oversized file was propagated across machines, triggering failures in core traffic proxying, leading to HTTP 5xx errors for many users.
- The outage affected many of Cloudflare’s services: CDN, security modules, authentication, dashboards.
- From first incident signs at ~11:20 UTC, full normal operations were restored only by ~17:06 UTC.
- Because Cloudflare supports a large fraction of web traffic globally, the ripple effects were widespread.
The business risk of a single point of failure
For any organization, from Construction, SaaS, to global enterprise connectivity, the Cloudflare incident emphasises:
- Uptime = revenue: When users cannot access your service, you lose opportunity, trust and potentially customers.
- Brand risk: Being down because your provider is down reflects on you, even if the root problem was external.
- Operational knock-on effects: Even if your main systems remain up, dependencies (authentication, APIs, dashboards) may fail.
- Complacency danger: A vendor may be reliable almost always, but “almost always” still leaves a window for disruption.
- Hidden dependencies: You may think you’re diversified, but someone else (your provider) may itself have a single point of failure.
How MSIM helps reduces that risk
Here’s where the approach from MSIM comes into play: not as a competitor to Cloudflare, but as an example of resilience through diversity and redundancy in connectivity:
- Multiple network paths: Rather than routing all traffic through a single vendor or network, MSIM’s approach provides alternative routes and switching carriers. So if one path fails, another takes over.
- Fallback and multi-carrier support: MSIM typically supports multiple carriers and technologies, ensuring that connectivity is not solely dependent on a single network or provider.
- Global reach with local resilience: For businesses operating internationally, MSIM’s model of providing connectivity across regions means you don’t rely on a one-size-fits-all global provider whose failure takes everything down.
- Programmable control and monitoring: With MSIM you can often control which paths are active, monitor performance, and dynamically switch, so you’re not in the dark during an outage.
- Business continuity built-in: Rather than “hope the provider stays up”, you design your architecture with redundancy: primary path, secondary path, fallback path. That’s exactly the protection that one major outage like Cloudflare’s exposes the need for.
Key take-aways for your business
- Don’t outsource your risk. The fact that your provider is “big” or “trusted” doesn’t eliminate risk.
- Map your dependencies: know exactly which services you depend on (CDN, security, connectivity, authentication) and how they connect.
- Invest in redundancy: at the network level, make sure you have backup paths, alternate providers, and fail-over mechanisms.
- Monitor the right metrics: latency, packet loss, path availability, not just “is it working” but “how well is it working”.
- Test failover: design for the scenario where your main path goes dark, how does traffic reroute? Is your business still reachable?
- Build with resilience in mind: resilience isn’t “nice to have”, it’s central in a world where even the largest infrastructure providers can falter.
Future-Proofing Your Connectivity
The recent Cloudflare outage is a reminder that no provider is immune, and no architecture should assume “always on” without a backup. If your business relies on connectivity, performance, and uptime, then consider that redundancy, diversity of paths and alternative connectivity strategies aren’t optional: they’re essential.
With MSIM’s model you’re not simply “plugging into one pipe”, you’re building a network fabric with options, safeguards and business-continuity baked in. Because when the backbone flinches, you want your service to stay standing.
Ready to eliminate single points of failure from your connectivity? Discover how MSIM gives your business true multi-carrier resilience. Contact us today to learn more.