NEW ORLEANS — An hours-long outage in Amazon Web Services left millions of people unable to access websites and apps worldwide on Monday.

The disruption affected everything from streaming platforms and social media to airline systems and smart home devices. The outage began Monday morning and continued for several hours, according to monitoring service Down Detector.

AWS, or Amazon Web Services, operates one of the world’s largest cloud networks, a vast system of physical data centers that store and deliver online content. It powers much of the internet’s backbone, connecting users to apps, websites, and devices used daily.

In North America, AWS operates major data centers in cities including San Francisco, Calgary, and Columbus. But its busiest and most critical hub is in Northern Virg

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