In perhaps unsurprising news, Cloudflare confirmed cloud failover mainly defined the last quarter in outages, as the web giant released its latest Internet Disruption Summary.

The infamous Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure drop-outs feature in the Cloudflare report, as well as Cloudflare itself for its own snafus toward year's end.

Cloudflare has since launched a page tracking availability and performance issues at a regional level across hyperscaler cloud platforms, including Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, alongside AWS and Azure.

Regarding its own mea culpa, Cloudflare said it was sticking with its new initiative unveiled in December, Code Orange: Fail Small. In its version of a Code Red, the warning label sees Cloudflare require staged rollouts for any network configuration changes, as well as rigorous failure mode tests for predictable behavior under all conditions, while simplifying emergency overrides to eschew circular dependencies for rapid response.

Cables and troubles

While cloud problems mainly defined the Western hemisphere last quarter, another common issue in 2025’s closing quarter was cable damage. Haiti saw not one but two outages across October and November due to cable cuts.

Damage to the PEACE submarine cable, meanwhile, knocked out services in Pakistan after the cable suffered a cut in the Red Sea near Sudan. According to Cloudflare, Internet traffic for Cybernet/StormFiber dropped sharply on October 20, falling to a level approximately 50% the same time a week before. The network’s announced IPv4 address space dropped by over a third at the same time.

Multiple Cameroon Internet providers - Camtel, MTN Cameroon, and Orange Cameroun - also saw outages due to damage to the WACS (West Africa Cable System) submarine cable. Connectivity in the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo was also reportedly affected by the same WACS issues.

Besides weather conditions and power outages, the familiar specter of geopolitics also affected the Internet last quarter, with Tanzania seeing full shutdown by government action in October, dropping traffic to near zero nationwide, while Russian military action targeting Ukraine’s Odessa region saw traffic in the nation drop by as much as 57% on December 12 compared to the previous week.

Cloudflare’s next report for this quarter will likely cast a light on Iran, which this month saw connectivity from multiple providers shut down following public unrest, with the entire country experiencing widespread web blackouts under the direction of the authorities.