Outage Cuts Off Access to Net

Some of the country’s leading high-technology companies were virtually cut off from the Internet on Friday after a power failure at Stanford University knocked out a switching station for one of the country’s largest Internet service providers.

The service provider, BBN Corp., said its 400 Silicon Valley customers--including Apple Computer Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Stanford itself--all lost access to its network when the company’s backup power supplies were exhausted several hours into the power outage.

The disruption affected users well beyond the Palo Alto area. Internet users around the world trying to access World Wide Web sites located on BBN’s Stanford master computers, or servers, were greeted with blank screens and error messages.

The online news service of the Los Angeles Times, latimes.com, was among the sites rendered out of commission Friday. Sites operated by Xerox Corp. and the Chicago Tribune were also affected.

The disruption underscores the vulnerability of the amorphous computer network, which is increasingly being used by businesses and individuals for everyday communication.

Cambridge, Mass.-based BBN, which advertises its “99.9% guaranteed connectivity” on many of the Web sites that went dark, has more than 60 nodes nationwide where businesses wire directly into the Internet. As it happens, BBN was one of the defense contractors that built the Internet in its original form many years ago.

“We understand how important full-time access to the Internet is to our customers, and we are doing everything we can to help Stanford restore electrical power to BBN’s facilities,” said BBN Chairman George H. Conrades, who was at the Palo Alto site working with customers on the problem.

Many of BBN’s high-tech customers contract with several access providers to avoid being caught short by any single provider’s technical problems. CERFnet, a large commercial access provider in California, reported a surge in traffic on its network as firms switched over. But several firms reported being cut off entirely or encountering a slowdown in the pace of Internet traffic. Power was being restored late Friday.

The outage, which coincided with Stanford’s homecoming weekend, also cut electricity to computers, classrooms and research facilities on campus.

“I have no Internet access; I have no e-mail,” said John Hennessy, dean of Stanford’s engineering school. “We can’t get anything done.”