eBay hit by system problems, brief outage By Troy Wolverton Staff Writer, CNET News.com September 14, 2000, 3:05 p.m. PT eBay suffered sporadic system problems today, including a one-hour outage of its home page.

The home page for the leading auction site went down between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. PT. Although other parts of the site were accessible, many of them, including eBay Motors and the company's message boards, were either unavailable or experienced slow loading times.

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About 2:40 p.m., the company posted a note on its announcements board saying the home page was available again. "The cause of the event was external," the company said in the message. "We are working with our ISPs and with authorities to address the situation."

Company representatives did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment.

Last month, San Jose, Calif.-based eBay experienced at least two site outages and numerous system problems during a project to address the long-term stability of its site. Although other Web sites have experienced outages from time to time, eBay's system problems often draw the ire of members, as the troubles can affect bidding on particular items and can prevent items from selling.

Members of a discussion group at AuctionWatch.com first noticed problems on eBay about 12:50 p.m. At least some people continued to have difficulties accessing eBay around 2:15 p.m.

"Down in Missouri," one AuctionWatch member wrote in a message board post. "Luckily my auctions for today already closed. Hope it comes back soon for the rest of you

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-2778359.html?tag=st.ne.1007.thed.ni

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), September 14, 2000