Canvas is a common online blackboard used by schools and universities all over the United States. Students use Canvas to submit assignments and obtain instructions for them, as well as lecture videos and other materials.
So, Canvas being down is a big deal to the functionability of schools all over the country. And that’s exactly what was happening on October 20, in the wake of the massive AWS outage.
AWS stands for Amazon’s cloud services unit, Amazon Web Services, which reported the massive outage, according to Fox Business, disabling many of the Internet’s core functions.
Amazon’s service health dashboard reported some improvement in the early evening hours of October 20, writing, “Service recovery across all AWS services continues to improve.”
It wasn’t just Canvas, of course.
- Other online services were affected by the outage, including Snapchat, Fortnite, and Amazon, CNN reported.
- “Amazon says its systems are back online again after connectivity issues persisted Monday. But reports of problems with Amazon’s cloud computing services unit AWS continue,” the network added.
- The outages may have cost a combined billions of dollars, CNN reported.
- According to BBC, the outage “took out major social media platforms like Snapchat and Reddit, banks like Lloyds and Halifax, and games like Roblox and Fortnite.” BBC noted that AWS has positioned itself as “the backbone of the internet,” so the outage spanned 1,000 companies. What caused it? According to BBC, a common error called a “Domain Name System (DNS) error.”
Is Canvas Down? Yes. The Outage Affected Schools from New Jersey to Wisconsin
The Canvas outage had nationwide impact.
Some examples:
- Rutgers University in New Jersey posted a link on its website that directed students and faculty to a statement that said customers in that region were “experiencing Canvas issues.” Rutgers explained, “As of 3:11 AM EDT, Amazon Web Services Status reported increased errors which is affecting services such as Rutgers Canvas, Kaltura, and Respondus Monitor. Currently, this has resulted in slow page loading and time-out errors. Canvas Engineering team is currently working with Amazon to identify and resolve these issues. You can check the status of Canvas on Canvas status page where we will post updates as they are available.”
- Canvas issues at the University of Texas at Austin resulted in a class midterm being postponed and students and professors having trouble communicating, according to the Daily Texan.
- There were also issues at Indiana University. “Multiple IU sites, including Canvas, Gradescope and Qualtrics have been down since early Monday morning,” wrote the student newspaper, IDS News.
- The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee posted this statement on its website: “WS Outage Impacting Canvas, Other Digital Learning Service. Update, 4:17 p.m., Oct 20, 2025: Canvas, Kaltura, Zoom and other Digital Learning Services are currently being impacted by an Amazon AWS outage which began approximately 2:00 am today. According to Amazon AWS, a fix has been made and their services are starting to recover.”
What Caused the AWS Outage?
According to BBC, DNS outages can have many causes, including the potential for human error or a maintenance problem.
Amazon said the error “occurred at its vast data centre plant in northern Virginia, its oldest and biggest site,” BBC reported.
