If you're not familiar with Cloudflare, you're not alone. Often described as "the biggest company you've never heard of," Cloudflare manages and secures traffic for roughly 20 percent of the web.

Your internet service provider (ISP) brings the internet into your home through a modem. A router then converts that signal into Wi-Fi, allowing phones, laptops, TVs and other devices to connect without cables. In short, the internet provides the connection, and Wi-Fi makes it accessible to your devices wirelessly.

A massive technical failure at Cloudflare, a critical internet infrastructure provider, caused widespread outages for major platforms including OpenAI

Common issues that might cause an internet outage include physical damage to internet infrastructure during construction, servers crashing or overheating, and even accidental misconfigurations —like it happened during the Facebook outage in 2021.