It was a case of taking a large dose of its own medicine this week for the cheeky technology news site theregister.co.uk.

The site, which is much loved for casting a satirical and critical eye on the high-tech sector, suffered its own technical fault and went down sporadically over a two-day period.

The register did what most in the industry do when something goes wrong: blame Cisco. In a truly cutting article, the site turned its anger on the firm accusing it of "a catalogue of farcical mishaps, including the breakdown of an engineer's laptop".