WhatsApp, Reddit, Trello and other apps down: Outage apparently takes down much of the internet

Something deep in the infrastructure of the internet appears to have been hit by a problem – leading to problems with many of the world's biggest apps and websites

It's all broken (Michael Bocchieri/Getty Images)

Large parts of the internet have broken across Europe, apparently because of problems with a cable that sends internet under the atlantic.

The problems appear to have begun with TeliaSonera's translatlantic network, which helps connect up Europe and the US through cables that run under the sea.

Many of the world's most popular apps – including WhatsApp, Reddit and Slack – are reported to be having problems, meaning that they are slow or completely inaccessible for many users.

And the issue has also led to problems at Cloudflare, a website that helps to send information around the internet. That company provides content delivery network services and other business, meaning that it helps power the infrastructure that serves up information to people who visit specific websites.

CloudFlare's website said that it was having issues in Europe and that it was working to fix them.

"CloudFlare is observing network performance issues in some European locations," the site's status page read. "We are actively working to reduce or eliminate any impact to Internet users in this region. "

Though CloudFlare is definitely experiencing problems, it doesn't appear that the problems are being caused by the company – some of the affected apps, including WhatsApp, don't use CloudFlare's services. Others suggested that all of the problems might be coming from elsewhere, perhaps from the Amazon servers that also help power much of the internet.