New York Times Web Site Suffers Problems

N E W  Y O R K, Feb. 13 -- The New York Times is having severe Web site problems today, the organization said.

"We're currently working to isolate the problem and hope to get it resolved as quickly as possible," said Lisa Carparelli, spokeswoman for New York Times Digital.

The nytimes.com site, one of the most popular news sites on the Web, is now back to 99 percent availability, said Della Lowe of Keynote Systems, which monitors the availability of Web sites.

But the site was struggling from 9 a.m. to noon ET, Lowe said. At 9 a.m., the Times was available on 90.7 percent of access attempts; by 11 a.m., it was only 59.1 percent available. The site recovered by noon, she said.

"It certainly was a huge spike for them, and unusual because they're very successful most of the time," Lowe said.

DNS Problems

The organization sent around an internal e-mail saying the www.nytimes.com Web site had domain name server or DNS problems, employees said. DNS is the system by which Web addresses that humans can read (like www.nytimes.com) are translated into computer addresses (such as 123.21.84.91). If DNS breaks down, Web browsers can't find the site — similar to a person being unable to reach someone on the phone whose name he knows but whose number he doesn't.

Internal configuration errors or external attacks could disable DNS. Carparelli said the Times had not yet determined the cause of the problems.

Microsoft suffered DNS failures on Jan. 22-26. First, they were caused by an internal configuration error, the company said; then, malicious hackers attacked Microsoft's Web sites for several days.

A major security flaw was found in a popular DNS software package on Jan. 29. The CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh said at the time that computer criminals could cut many sites off of the Net if they didn't upgrade their software to a more secure version immediately.