Ihug knocked out by hardware fault

6.00 pm - By MICHAEL FOREMAN

Internet service provider ihug says it has fixed an intermittent hardware fault that disrupted its email, web and phone services for over 24 hours.

The problems started on Wednesday when the company was forced to close its web-based email service in order to carry out "urgent hardware maintenance".

Later that day customers began to complain of slow browsing speeds when accessing New Zealand websites.

Technicians believed they had fixed the fault late on Wednesday evening, but by yesterday morning it was clear ihug was dealing with a major network outage.

All internet traffic was halted and ihug's phone system was knocked out for several hours.

Managing director Nick Wood said he was not sure how many of the company's 130,000 customers had been affected but no emails had been lost.

He said the problem had been traced to a circuit board in a server which was vital to about one third of ihug's network.

"It was a very small problem but it was in a very important piece of gear."

Ihug has warned customers may continue to experience email delays as its mail servers catch up with the backlog.