UUNet suffers US brown-out

NEWS UUNet, one of the world's largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs), has admitted it suffered network problems on Sunday evening which could have affected millions of users. The company said that a router in one of its customer's premises sent out incorrect information which led to "periods of instability" - or what is sometimes known as a brown-out - between 16:00 and 22:00 GMT. Most of the eastern seaboard of the US is believed to have been affected, although it is possible users anywhere on the ISP's global network could have suffered from sluggish network performance. A spokesman for UUNet told Silicon.com: "We apologise for any inconvenience this caused our customers, but we have to say we're grateful it happened on a Sunday rather than on a busy week day. For most people, the problem wouldn't have shown up as anything but slowness. Everything is back to normal now and there are no residual problems."