Internet Archive site offline for hours

The Internet Archive, also known as The Wayback Machine, suffered an outage on August 25 around midnight EST. Disappointed fans around the world who were unable to access the website expressed their patient concern and thanks for the website.

The Internet Archive is not working

The website displayed a message that the website is down.

Checking headers via Webconfs.com the website showed that the website was sending to the browser, which showed that the website was sending a 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable Error Response.

This error message code is usually sent when the server is down for maintenance or because the server is overloaded and cannot respond with the web page.

Tweet Notification

The Internet Archive posted a tweet shortly after midnight warning the public that the website was down.

The tweet didn’t offer any information about what’s wrong, only that they’re working to get the site back up and running.

Here is the tweet:

We are working to resolve the impacting outage https://t.co/rvOhn0c6zM & @waybackmachine.

— Internet Archive (@internetarchive) August 25, 2022

Wayback Machine Fans World Wide are expressing concern

Many people were inconvenienced, but those who posted comments were more concerned than upset, with many simply posting messages of appreciation.

IsItDownRightNow had over 300 comments expressing concern.

Some people were students who needed the site for their research.

Another was a Grateful Dead fan who posted that their attempts to stream archived Grateful Dead concerts were unsuccessful.

Comments also poured in on Twitter.

I won’t be listening to the Grateful Dead today. REST IN PEACE

— Hakkı Bluoyd (@hakki_bluoyd) August 25, 2022

Thanks, I was interrupted in the middle of a critical moment in the book! I will wait for an update to restore the service, hopefully soon.

— Miss Maryo (@MeNotBornToday) August 25, 2022

Ah, I thought that was my link. Please come back soon 🙏🤍

— Small reminders and the like. (@minireminders) August 25, 2022

thanks for the update! We are so used to using the archive and it is always there. Before I checked here, we checked the internet connection several times. I hope the issues will be resolved soon, best regards and many thanks for your services to the world community

— Mir Titles (@MirTitles) August 25, 2022

What could be wrong?

There was some speculation that the site might not work because of the several lawsuits filed by publishers who oppose the free distribution of books.

But the error message provided by the site indicates that there is a problem at the server level, which could be the cause of a myriad of problems.

This article will be updated as more information becomes available.