Telstra Europe and NatWest have blamed domain name server problems for the service downtime both suffered yesterday.

In a statement, Telstra said: "Telstra Europe is experiencing a problem with its DNS (Domain Name Server) service and is currently investigating the cause of this problem to ensure that a full service can be resumed as quickly as possible. Once additional information is available, a further statement will be made."

NatWest said intermittent DNS problems made access to its website difficult between 1pm and 6pm yesterday.

Microsoft also suffered problems with many Reg readers emailing us to complain of problems getting onto Hotmail and MSN.

There were no more details on what caused the problems, although one respondent suggested a denial of service attack against domain name servers was to blame.®