(FINANCIAL TIMES) - Excessively fragile, overdependent on unproven companies and prone to human errors that can wipe out service to millions - the outages that often hit online services can make the Internet feel like a house of cards. Digital life has become so important during the pandemic, why do we depend on a communications network whose reliability seems so volatile?

Last week's object lesson in Internet fallibility was served up by Fastly, which operates one of the largest content delivery networks. Private networks like this act as an enhancement to the public Internet, offering a higher level of assurance to media companies and others that their digital content will reach users reliably and quickly.