Time-Warner hit with Internet

Internet and telephone service for thousands of Southern California homes and businesses went out today, as one of the largest Internet providers tried to repair a system-wide failure in its network serving Los Angeles, Orange County, the Coachella Valley and San Diego.

Time-Warner Cable spokesman

A Time-Warner Cable spokesman, reached at his home in Maryland today, said the data interruption is as well cutting telephone service for some clients who use the Time-Warner line for dial-tone phone service. VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service like Skype or Vonage would as well be cut.

Customer service workers in California told clients the entire Time-Warner Internet network was down. "We've been calling people out of bed to fix this, and we're getting calls from everywhere," one told a City News Service reporter.

The outage came as the East Coast

The outage came as the East Coast was hit by Hurricane Irene, and computer experts have in the past said that nationwide Internet systems can be brought down by single-point failures. No link between the storm and the California failure has been established, Gordon said.