outage

RIM's BlackBerry outages come at worst possible time

Research In Motion's rolling global outages could be a major body blow for a company looking to get off the mat. In fact, the timing of these outages is simply brutal.

Here are the moving parts:

RIM is trying to convince folks to buy its BlackBerry 7 devices and has an iPhone 4S launch as well as a bevy of Android phones hitting the market. Its developer conference is next week and RIM has to rev up its supporters. A crucial QNX update is coming in weeks ahead that will make or break RIM's PlayBook tablet. Emerging markets … Read more

BlackBerry service issues spread to U.S. and Canada

BlackBerry subscribers throughout the world continued to experience disruptions in service for a third consecutive day as problems with Research In Motion's equipment in its data centers appears to now be affecting North American subscribers as well.

Customers using Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphones in the U.S. and Canada are now also without access to e-mail and BlackBerry messaging in an outage that has already plagued subscribers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa since Monday.

RIM said it has fixed the problem on Monday. But service disruption continued Tuesday with only spotty access to e-mail, BlackBerry … Read more

International BlackBerry outage continues

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has still not fully restored e-mail, messaging, and Web service to more than 10 million customers in Europe, the Middle East, parts of South America, and Africa after a disruption at one of its network operation centers yesterday.

A BlackBerry outage, which began on Monday around 10:20 a.m. BST, has resulted in limited access to e-mails, Web browsing, and messaging services such as BlackBerry Messenger, otherwise known as BBM.

Late yesterday, RIM said it had resolved the issue. But this morning, millions of BlackBerry subscribers woke up to find their service was still … Read more

BlackBerry data outage in Europe, Middle East, Africa

BlackBerry users across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa have been hit by a data outage that cut off access to e-mail, the Internet, and instant messaging, among other services.

The outage began today around 10:20 a.m. BST and is still continuing, according to posts to Twitter by BlackBerry owners and service providers. Carriers in the UK are blaming Research In Motion for the problem, and the Canadian company confirmed the downtime in a short statement today.

"We are working to resolve an issue currently impacting some BlackBerry subscribers in Europe, Middle East and Africa," RIM … Read more

Apple.com down after iPhone announcement

Apple fans who had trouble accessing live blogs of the Let's Talk iPhone event on news sites today were further frustrated when they couldn't access Apple's own site.

With all the anticipation that surrounded this event (though many people found the news to be a bit of a letdown) and Apple.com being one of the 10 most popular sites on the planet, you'd think that the company would have been prepared for increased traffic to the site today. Nevertheless, the site was been down sporadically shortly after the iPhone event ended.

While visitors to the … Read more

Bit.ly back up and running following outage

Link-shortening service Bit.ly was down for a period of time last night, but the service appears to be working just fine now.

Last night, CNET editors found first that Bit.ly links were not working and then that all of Bit.ly seemed to be down. A quick search on Twitter reveals that some others had also been affected by the outage.

"Is Bit.ly down for anyone else or just me?" one Twitter user asked late last night. Another user quickly followed that up, saying "For the first time I can remember, Bit.ly is … Read more

BlackBerry outage hits e-mail, messenger access

Talk about bad timing for Research In Motion.

On the heels of another disappointing quarterly report, RIM is suffering from an outage that has hit its e-mail and BlackBerry Messenger services today. BlackBerry customers took to Twitter to voice their complaints. The company later acknowledged problems.

"Some Canada & LatAm customers report BBM issues. Our support teams are investigating. We apologize for any inconvenience," the company said in a tweet.

A RIM representative wasn't immediately available to provide further details on the extent of the problem to CNET.

The outage appears to be more widespread. The Huffington Post reported seeing tweets complaining about service in the U.K. and the Middle East. … Read more

Internet outage or no outage? That is the question

Twitter users tweeted this afternoon about a "rather large Internet outage" that was affecting access to the site, but an Internet traffic expert said he didn't see any major problems today.

The Internet Traffic Report showed problems for a period of time today for some routers serving North America. Specifically, three routers in Canada were registering zero response time and 100 percent packet loss, as were one in Mexico, New Hampshire, Texas, and Wisconsin. Routers in Nevada and Iowa appeared to be having less severe problems.

Representatives of the Internet Traffic Report did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment, or immediately respond to a phone message left for someone in Arizona listed as the administrator via the Whois domain lookup later today.

Bill Woodcock, research director of the Packet Clearing House, told CNET that he was not aware of any major Internet performance problems today.

"I know that there was an outage on Level 3's network in Phoenix between noon and 1 p.m. [PT]," he said. "There was certainly no general widespread outage at that time."

Level 3 provided this statement tonight: "At approximately noon PT, Level 3 experienced an isolated network issue that resulted in temporary voice and IP traffic disruptions for customers in the Phoenix area for approximately one hour. The company acted quickly to resolve the issue and service is now restored for those customers."

Meanwhile, at about 3:30 p.m. PT, Twitter's Support account said it was investigating "site availability issues some folks are experiencing." … Read more

Discounted Missoni clothing line crashes Target.com

Target's Web site buckled yesterday under the load of online shoppers who were interested in a luxury clothing line offered at a discount there and now bargain hunters are ticked off.

Apparently the handlers of Target.com and those who came up with the idea of offering part of the popular Missoni fashion line at a discount misjudged the interest. According to reports, Target.com crashed yesterday at 9 a.m., three hours after the Missoni items became available. The site was down for at least several hours according to The New York Times. Today, the site appeared to … Read more