Microsoft clueless about cause of website crash

The only details available so far are that the software giant's domain name servers (DNS) failed. But Microsoft has been unable to say precisely what caused that failure.

Microsoft's IP address, 207.46.230.218, was usable throughout the day, meaning the company's web servers themselves were fully functional.

One technical expert said: "They may have made a configuration change and then propagated it to all their DNS boxes. If there was an error in that configuration, it could have had this effect."

Comments posted on open source community site slashdot.org suggested Microsoft's own procedures contributed to the scale of the problem. All its DNS servers appear to be hosted on the same loop of its network - a clear breach of good security policy. One posting on the site described it as "engineering incompetence of the first order".

Foul play hasn't been ruled out, although most experts believe this is unlikely.

John Sharp, CEO of the Business Continuity Institute, said: "Today's failure by microsoft.com shows the importance of not just having business continuity plans, but proper tested processes in place to deal with such problems."

At the time of publication, a Microsoft spokeswoman claimed the software giant's DNS servers were now back up. She added that it would take time for this information to be spread to ISPs around the world, meaning users could have problems accessing Microsoft websites for some time.

The online properties affected include microsoft.com, msn.com, msnbc.com and encarta.com.