Major websites knocked offline

(Gray News) - Major websites like UPS, FedEx and Home Depot were knocked offline Thursday.

According to the Downdetector website, hosting services like Amazon Web Services and content delivery network Akamai were reporting outages.

“We are aware of an emerging issue with the Edge DNS service,” Akamai said on its website. “We are actively investigating the issue.”

The Domain Name System (DNS) is the phonebook of the Internet. Websites on the internet are accessed through domain names like usp.com or homedepot.com.

The problem appeared to peak around 12:20 p.m. ET, according to Downdetector.

“We have implemented a fix for this issue, and based on current observations, the service is resuming normal operations,” Akamai said on Twitter. “We will continue to monitor to ensure that the impact has been fully mitigated.”

Websites appeared to return to normal by early afternoon.

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