Demon customers hit by outage

Some customers of UK ISP Demon have suffered a four-day outage following a software failure on one of its hosting platforms.

One of Demon's servers crashed on Thursday afternoon last week and was not back online until Monday morning.

A Demon spokeswoman said the company had suffered a "file system software failure on one of 10 hosting platforms".

A Demon customer who was affected by the outage told silicon.com: "Our website is integral to the business. Being offline for the best part of a week, and much disruption the preceding week, has been a nightmare."

Due to the nature of the problem it took longer to rectify than normal, said Demon, as a new host platform had to be brought on stream. The ISP has also put in place "new processes and procedures" to prevent a recurrence of the problem, said the spokeswoman.

Demon estimates the problem affected two per cent of its customer base.

The ISP has alerted the affected customers via email and provided them with a helpline - and said it will discuss with them any possible compensation.