Internet users around the world have been experiencing one of the most serious breakdowns in Internet history. Over recent days, thousands of World Wide Web sites disappeared and e-mail traffic ground to a halt over large portions of the Internet.
Some Internet observers believe the problem may be related to a power struggle on the Internet.
One, contested, version blames a technician's failure to react to an automated alarm in Herndon, Virginia, garbled computer files where millions of Internet addresses are kept, causing the system's first major breakdown.
The "human error" on Thursday morning at Network Solutions Inc sent garbled files to 10 large Internet-connected, "root server" computers around the world, making millions of World Wide Websites inaccessible for hours.
Computer users in Europe, were among the first to encounter problems.
"What occurred . . . wasn't a technical problem, it was a human problem," a Network Solutions spokesman manager insisted said yesterday.
However, many industry sources believe that the problem is rooted in a battle over who controls the commercially valuable addressing system which the Internet uses.
On Thursday thousands of World Wide Web sites disappeared and e-mail traffic stopped.
The problem arose when a group of computers, key to the workings of the Internet, began to function erratically.
As these computers which operate the Domain Name System (DNS) are crucial in organising Internet traffic, this meant that key sites of major American companies simply vanished.
The Internet was developed by the American military to avoid just such breakdowns through an intricate re-routing system.
This allows Internet traffic to work its way around any faults in the network. The Internet has also developed a system to make navigation easier for non-specialists.
Now this system has revealed itself as one of the most vulnerable parts of the Net.
This system, DNS, is at the heart of the current problems. It matches names with the series of numbers, which are the real addresses read by computers handling the electronic messages. Names are much more attractive to Internet users and to companies doing business there.
The current problem is with the computers on which these names are stored.
Domain names on the Internet, such as .com, .org, or .net are currently administered by a private American company, InterNIC.
In recent weeks, InterNIC has been under attack from computer hackers unhappy about the company's control of this important part of the Internet.
The issue of who has the right to award the crucial .com, .org and .net addresses is currently much debated.
The addresses are commercially valuable as the Internet develops and companies seek to develop their Web brands. The name "business.com" was recently bought from its registered owner for $150,000.
According to Mr Alan Judge, network operations manager of Internet service provider Indigo, InterNIC's statement "sounds plausible, and given how embarrassing it is, it might even be the truth . . . "