UUNet customers cut off by Internet outage

An Internet outage leaving some of business ISP UUNet's customers without connectivity on Tuesday has been blamed on the London Internet Exchange (LINX).

According to a connectivity report on ISP UUNet's Web site, some of its business customers had trouble getting online.

"It is currently believed that this was due to a problem within the London Internet Exchange, which caused bogus routes to be propagated onto the UUNet network," a statement reads. To resolve the problem, UUNet engineers had to perform emergency maintenance and normal service is now resumed. "UUNet regrets any inconvenience caused to its customers at this time," the statement ends.

LINX is a non-profit alliance of ISPs and provides the physical connections that allow ISPs to exchange traffic. With a reputation for technical excellence, the firm remains bemused at how problems leaked onto one of its partner's networks. "We had routine maintenance work which is part of an ongoing upgrade and some of the network was down," explained a spokesman. "I'm not quite sure how this caused bogus routes."

It claims it informed customers of the essential work and that 100 percent of connections are now restored.

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