Akamai, the world"s biggest content delivery service on the web, appears to be having some DNS issues, which are affecting a variety of sites. Akamai uses its vast network of servers across the globe to allow heavily accessed websites (e.g google.com, apple.com) a distributed base of opperations. This normally works well, allowing fast download speeds for users across the world, with files being cached on relativly local servers.
However, this setup can be thrown when the DNS system that directs clients to the servers fails or mal-functions. This is what appears to have happened, with some users being unable to access these sites. The Internet Storm Center reports that some sites have been problematic since 12.30 GMT today, and some sites have since removed Akamai from their DNS entries falling back onto their own networks. Akamai have not released any information as to the specific cause of the problem, or when it will be resolved.
Akamai recently had issues serving content, blaming the issue on a DDOS against its servers.