Several major media websites were temporarily unavailable, including those of the Guardian, Financial Times, Independent, and the New York Times.
The UK government website - gov.uk - was also affected.
Sites affected by the error posted the message: "Error 503 Service Unavailable".
Preliminary reports indicate that this may be due to a defect in Fastly's system, which provides services for portable large-scale web systems.
The company said there was an error in its content distribution network (CDN) and was implementing the amendment.
"Our global network is back again." said through a statement
The inquiries began at 11:00 a.m. and lasted one hour. Other affected sites include CNN and online streaming sites Twitch and Hulu. The outbreak also disrupted parts of other services, including Twitter emojis.
The sites also began to be restored, after an hour of being down.
Right now it looks like the problems were internal, meaning specific areas across Europe and the United States were affected
Similar problems have affected Amazon Web Services.
The error has led some to question the wisdom of having more internet infrastructure in the hands of a few companies, meaning that when something goes wrong it causes great inconvenience.
