Globally used DNS provider Network Solutions suffers an outage

On Wednesday 17th March, globally used DNS provider Network Solutions experienced the dreaded downtime we all hope to avoid. Starting at 4am Eastern time and continuing through to Thursday 18th with still no resolution, it’s affected thousands of people across the world.

Who are Network Solutions? 

Network Solutions are the 4th biggest domain registrar in the world, with nearly 7 million users worldwide. They offer a range of different online services, with specialised expertise in domains and web hosting, website optimisations and development, social media advertising, and SSL certificates.

How has Network Solutions downtime affected our customers?

For us, Network Solutions downtime has clearly affected our customers’ website downtime with customers in Canada, the USA, UK, Germany, and France all experiencing DNS type outages. 

From our data, it seems that Network Solutions going down has affected people’s emails which will, unfortunately, prove massively detrimental due to the sheer number of emails people are sending now we’re in lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

On further investigation, we can see that we’ve sent more alerts by both email and SMS than average for website downtime to our user base, with an estimated 1,000 users suffering as a result of Network Solutions being down.

The bad news doesn’t stop there, unfortunately. Network Solutions also has a partner program, meaning that both bigger, well-known companies and smaller businesses will both be affected by this unexplained downtime. Other reported linked providers include register.com. 

What are Network Solutions saying about their service issues?

Network Solutions was inundated on Twitter with complaints from users, many wanting to know when it would be back up and running. In a statement from their Twitter profile, they said: 

As of 18th March AM, Network Solutions has experienced over 12 hours of service issues, which will undoubtedly have a huge impact on customers worldwide. They’ve had hundreds of comments on social media, more so today with the outage expected to have been fixed ready for their customers today.

It just goes to show that unfortunately, website downtime and outages happen to everyone, regardless of precautionary measures taken. That’s why it’s extremely important to have website monitoring in place to alert you as soon as website downtime happens.