Software Glitch Knocks Out Akamai

A software glitch slowed Akamai Technologies servers and made it difficult to reach some of its customers' Web sites Monday, the distributed computing company said.

Some Akamai customers experienced "intermittent performance problems and degradation" for about 90 minutes, between 8 a.m. ad 9:30 a.m. Eastern. The problem was caused by a bug in content management software that Akamai customers use to update content on Akamai servers, said Jeff Young, an Akamai spokesman.

Word of the outage surfaced in Internet discussion groups Monday, with some suggesting that the company was suffering a denial-of-service attack. Akamai's service is designed, in part, to thwart such attacks. The company uses content routing technology and a worldwide network of servers to make sure Internet users can quickly access content, despite heavy Internet traffic or interruptions in the Internet's performance.

Young denied that any "outside interference" was the cause of the trouble, putting the blame squarely on the Cambridge, Mass., company's own software.

IDG News Service