Internet down: Many of the world's biggest websites stop working after Amazon Web Services cloud breaks

Imgur, Medium, Trello, SoundCloud and other websites have all been taken offline

Fast.com uses Netflix's server to check your download speed (Michael Bocchieri/Getty Images)

Many of the world's biggest websites have stopped working because of a problem at Amazon.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the division of the retail giant that provides the infrastructure for much of the internet, appears to have broken. That means that all of the companies and websites that rely on its services – many of the world's biggest websites, like Imgur and Medium, as well as professional tools like SoundCloud and Trello – have stopped working at the same time.

Amazon says that the S3 service hasn't broken but is just experiencing a higher "error rate" than usual. But the problems mean that the websites that rely on its services can't get online all the same.

AWS is usually one of the internet's most reliable services. But because of the many websites that rely on it, any bug can cause catastrophic problems across the internet.

Some of those websites only rely on specific parts of Amazon's services. So the SoundCloud website appears to be up, for instance, but it's not possible to upload new audio onto it.

Others appear to rely on it more heavily and so are down entirely. Trello and other websites have been left completely broken by the problem.