• Germany edition
Photo: DPA

Glitch shuts down German internet

Published: 12 May 10 16:02 CET
Updated: 12 May 10 16:59 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20100512-27149.html

A major technical glitch shut down a wide swath of the German internet on Wednesday, leaving many websites with .de domains unavailable.

DENIC, the organisation that manages the top-level country domain for Germany said the problem started around 1:30 pm and the cause was still unclear.

“Colleagues are feverishly working on a solution,” a DENIC spokeswoman told public broadcaster ARD.

ARD’s website reported the glitch primarily affected internet domains starting with the letters ‘E’ through ‘O,’ however, www.thelocal.de was also temporarily unavailable in parts of Germany on Wednesday afternoon.

Potentially more annoying for many internet users is the impact the glitch has had on email addresses with German domain names. Many emails to .de domains were being returned as undeliverable on Wednesday.

According to DENIC, there are 13.6 million internet addresses using the .de ending.

The Local (news@thelocal.de)

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Your comments about this article:

16:57 May 12, 2010 by Eagle1
Ein Glitch! Sheisse.
17:43 May 12, 2010 by dcgi
@iain: google://recursion
00:32 May 13, 2010 by berlinski
Missed out on sniping an auction on eBay. Wonder if I can sue for loss of earnings?
11:07 May 13, 2010 by grazhdanin
I'm a German living in Germany, but I haven't even noticed the glitch. Since the new, and pointless, German Spelling has become so widespread I'm evading such sites (except for the Local).
12:51 May 13, 2010 by mehta_p
On wednesday we, my office colleagues and I, have experienced this glitch problem. We usually send orders from our system to various buiness partners to their e-mail ID which we use since yrs. Yesterday we have got many e-mail failurity reports. Now I have come to know about its reason.

I also stay in Germany.
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