Internet outage: New Zealand websites back up and running after global issues

New Zealand websites Trade Me, TVNZ On Demand and Radio NZ were among those that suffered a brief outage last night. File Photo / Nigel Marple

Several New Zealand websites caught up in a global internet outage late last night are back up and running this morning.

Trade Me, TVNZ On Demand and Radio New Zealand were among those affected by the outage where some of the world's biggest news sites went down for about an hour.

They included the New York Times, CNN, the BBC, Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Guardian sites.

Trade Me reported its site was down at 10.17pm, telling users via their social media pages: "One of our service providers is experiencing issues and that is impacting our site.

Unable to catch up on tvnz on demand. Coping via red wine and Acast.

— ShoeAddict (@VinoQueenNZ) June 8, 2021

"We're really sorry for any inconvenience and we'll let you know when we're back online."

The issue was resolved by 11.15pm, when a notice informing users the site was back online went up on Twitter.

As a result of the outage, the auction site extended listings due to close between 9.48pm and 11.15pm by two hours.

Trade Me is back online following the outage that impacted many websites this evening.

We have extended listings due to close between 9.48pm and 11.15pm by 2 hours. We're really sorry for any inconvenience.

If you have any questions please get in touch https://t.co/aoFnCsxUnX

— trademe (@TradeMe) June 8, 2021

Those catching up on their latest favourite series on TVNZ On Demand took to Twitter to vent their frustrations when the outage was reported.

One woman wrote: "TVNZ is down one week after I discovered On Demand. How will I procrastinate tonight?"

Another was more than upset, writing: "I'm so f****** angry that the TVNZ On Demand app stopped working...I wanted to watch Big Brother."

RNZ said last night most of its users had reported receiving "Error 503" messages when they tried to access its website.

The 503 error message refers to an error response code indicating the server is not ready to handle a request.

The station's website homepage went offline about 9.46pm and access was restored just before 10.30pm.

The cause of the wide outage is not yet known.

A common cause, however, is a server that is down for maintenance or that is has become overloaded.