Microsoft Web Sites Cut Off From Many Users

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Several Microsoft Corp. Web sites, including the software giant's main corporate site and its MSN Internet portal, were cut off to many users on Wednesday due to problems with the

Wednesday, January 24th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Several Microsoft Corp. Web sites, including the software giant's main corporate site and its MSN Internet portal, were cut off to many users on Wednesday due to problems with the way Web traffic is directed to the sites, the company said.

The problems surfaced on Tuesday night and Microsoft technicians were diagnosing the problem and hoped to have the sites back up soon, company spokesman Adam Sohn said.

Asked if the problems could be the result of a hacker attack, Sohn said, ``We're not ruling anything out at this point. There's not enough data at this point, but the guys are working as quick as they can to get it diagnosed, treated and cured.''

The affected sites included microsoft.com, the company's main site where customers can go for product news and updates, and the MSN.com portal that is a popular site for Web searches, shopping and news, Sohn said.

The Carpoint automobile buying service, Homeadvisor home buying site, Expedia (NasdaqNM:EXPE - news) travel service, and windowsmedia.com entertainment guide were also inaccessible on Wednesday morning.

Sohn said he did not think the Hotmail service, which provides free, Web-based e-mail to more than 74 million users worldwide, was affected. But that service was unavailable to some users on Wednesday morning.

The problems appeared to be of little concern to investors as Microsoft shares rose $1-7/8, or 3 percent, to $62-7/16 on the Nasdaq market in early afternoon trading. Expedia shares climbed 11/16, or 4.5 percent, to $16-1/16.

Translators Knocked Out

It was one of the broadest Web site outages in weeks. Earlier this month, online auction site eBay Inc. crashed for nearly 11 hours due to system failures. In December, the Web site of online retailer Amazon.com crashed briefly several times during the busy holiday shopping season.

Microsoft's problems also raised the specter of another possible embarrassing hacker attack on the world's largest software company, which was hit in October by an intruder who made off with part of the code for products in development.

The root of the problem was not with the Web sites themselves, but with the DNS, or domain name server, system that directs visitors to the sites, Sohn said.

The DNS system translates words like ``microsoft.com'' into a string of numbers, called an IP (Internet Protocol) address and, like a traffic sign, points a user's computer to the right Web site.

Some users could still get to the sites if they accessed the Internet through proxy servers, a kind of computer often used by large companies or Internet access providers to store popular Web content closer to end users, Sohn said.

Because IP addresses are often stored for days on proxy servers, those computers might still point the way to Microsoft's online properties without help from Microsoft's system, Sohn said.