Savvis Outage Knocks Lycos Offline

The web portal Lycos was knocked offline when two Savvis Communications data centers in Boston suffered a connectivity failure, causing downtime for customers hosted at the facility. A backup fiber cable was "accidentally severed," according to Lycos spokeswoman Kathy O'Reilly (no one specifically blamed a backhoe, but it sure sounds like a likely culprit). Sites affected included the entire Lycos Network, including Lycos Mail and the Tripod Web hosting service, as well as IDG's CIO Magazine. See The WHIR and C/Net for additional coverage.