Akamai Technologies Inc., which helps to optimize Web traffic by storing content at widely spaced points on the Internet, said that a glitch in its software caused major traffic disruptions on Monday.
Akamai, which helps companies such as Yahoo, The New York Times and Microsoft distribute content over the Web, said that a glitch in its software used to clean out temporarily stored Web content was inadvertently activated. This rendered many Web sites unavailable between 8:00 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. Eastern time.
"All customers are back to being served normally,” said Jeff Young, director of public relations at the Cambridge, Mass.-based company.
Young said that the outage was not the result of a security attack. Visitors to some sites, reportedly including eBay, Yahoo and MSNBC, saw the same error message that appears when sites are shut down due to Internet attacks.
Akamai serves about 15 percent of the traffic on the Web, the company said.