outage

Microsoft now faces a lawsuit over recent problems with its Xbox Live online gaming service.

Three Texas residents filed a lawsuit Friday on behalf of themselves and others who have had trouble connecting to Xbox Live in recent weeks.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Houston, claims Microsoft's outages represent a breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation for which the software maker is liable. The suit doesn't claim specific damages, but notes the amount is in excess of $5 million.

In the suit, the plaintiffs allege that Microsoft should have known strong holiday sales would … Read more

An extended outage at RealNetworks' Rhapsody music service has locked out an unknown number of users for the second time since March.

While the earlier problem prevented some customers from accessing the site for up to two weeks, this time executives don't know when the problem will be corrected. A handful of Rhapsody users complained on the company's message boards this week that they haven't been able to log on since Friday.

"It's a known issue," said Justine Navaja, a company spokesperson. "We don't know yet when it will be fixed, but … Read more

Cisco Systems' Web site had a hard time coming back from the Thanksgiving vacation on Monday.

An outage struck the networking giant Monday morning and continued to affect parts of the Web site for hours. The company, which uses its site for e-commerce, support, and work with business partners, said in a statement it's investigating.

"Earlier this morning, Cisco.com experienced some issues that impacted access to certain applications on the site," Cisco said in a statement midmorning Monday, but the San Jose, Calif.-based company didn't immediately say what parts of the site were down. &… Read more

Reports of users being temporarily cut off from BlackBerry service have been popping up on the Web.

BlackBerry users who are also customers of Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon complained of slow e-mail or completely interrupted mobile data service. Corporate customers of Research In Motion did not seem to be affected.

Silicon Alley Insider got this statement from RIM: "Some customers using BlackBerry Internet Service experienced a delay this afternoon in sending or receiving e-mail. The issue has since been resolved and no messages were lost. RIM continues to investigate the matter. Service for BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers was not … Read more

Several readers blasted me for my blog post last week about the Skype outage. I assumed that many of the people using Skype's messaging and voice over IP service didn't rely on the service for their primary form of communication. But several people pointed out that many small businesses use Skype to communicate with clients, employees and partners.

These comments got me thinking about this segment of the market. And now I'm working on a story that will take a look at how small businesses use free communications services like Skype instead of products that they would … Read more

Skype's service appears to be up and running again for the most part, after software issues Thursday prevented millions of Skype users from signing on to the IP telephony application.

Skype officials say the outage was not due to a cyberattack or network upgrades. Instead they attributed the issue to "a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software. This controls the interaction between the user's own Skype client and the rest of the Skype network."

As of 11 a.m. GMT Friday, the company said that the software had started to stabilize. Some users have … Read more

A week after a slew of popular Web sites were knocked offline temporarily by a power outage in San Francisco, the data center for the Web sites has finally disclosed what went wrong.

Basically, backup generators made by a Dutch company called Hitec failed to work, according to an update posted to the Web site of data center 365 Main.

Here's what happened: transformer breakers at a San Francisco Pacific Gas & Electric power station unexpectedly opened, causing a power surge that cut off electricity to a portion of the city. (PG&E does not know why the … Read more

Yahoo representatives responded this afternoon to our requests for comment on alleged outages that were reported by multiple readers. The company has said that it was not actual downtime, but that sites like Yahoo News and Flickr were delayed by network carrier issues.

In the statement e-mailed to CNET News.com, Yahoo's corporate communications representatives said, "For a brief period early this morning, some Yahoo users may have experienced delays in accessing Yahoo services in the U.S. due to network carrier-related issues. The problem has since been identified and corrected by our network vendor. We know that … Read more

A power outage, possibly related to the sweltering heat, has knocked out one of New York City's most heavily trafficked subway lines as well as some lights in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. The outage, which apparently began around 3:40 PM EDT, affected the 4, 5, and 6 subway lines (the green line), the D line, and power in nearby areas of Manhattan and the Bronx near Yankee Stadium. There's no word on when power will be restored yet.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority's Web site, meanwhile, is timing out, probably due to the overload … Read more