What is Error 503?

 

Recently something happened, I was browsing a few websites I usually visit and the funniest thing happened I couldn’t access them and error 503 was written on the screen, I did what any gen z would do” I googled it” and what I found out was interesting didn’t quite fit in.

Well google told me what an error 503 was but the answer was not satisfactory, well this is what google showed me.  This is the definition of error 503

To better understand what is error 503 and why it happens, we should understand how a website works, basically websites have a page, a code and a webserver, these three makes the up websites you use including the one you are using currently.

       So, a code tells how a page should be like, where a heading should be, where the video should be placed and how the text should be displayed, but the main workhorse which facilitate this is the webserver, think of it as a computer that brings the page to you when you browse the site through your browser.

Why this error 503 or webserver down happens, well there can be many reasons and doesn’t necessarily mean the webserver is faulty or malfunctioning

could be a faulty firewall configuration that is blocking requests from the firewall side or a bug in websites code that is stopping it from displaying it properly or it may be due to the high amount of traffic it gets than what was intended but that’s usually among new website which get a sudden traffic surge, Large-scale websites usually have a server farm which is a network of connected web servers that handle requests. If some of them go down, it puts a strain on the remaining servers, which reduces the number of active connections possible on a website drastically. 

Well, this explained why a single website would crash but why all the major sites crashed together that too at the same time. After some investigation my “expertly snooping mind found the answer(exclamation)it was due to “flashy” a CDN (content delivery network) provider. According to a tweet put out by the company, the issue was caused by a faulty service configuration. Think of it as a set of rules that govern the distribution of content across websites. The problem here seemed to be caused by one of those rules breaking or a faulty rule. 

By this my curious yet lazy mind got what it needed and went back knowing this is not the end and “Skynet will attack soon and I will be back” with another blog till then “stay safe stay curious”