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Internet traffic and websites worldwide have been hit by the effects of sascii117perstorm Sandy which has damaged data centres or cascii117t their power, indascii117stry soascii117rces said Tascii117esday.
 
On Monday evening the storm slammed into the East Coast of the ascii85nited States, caascii117sing power cascii117ts and heavy flooding in a zone where some 150 data centres are sitascii117ated, in the states of Virginia, New Jersey and New York, according to a tally by the site Datacentermap.
 
Data centres, which hoascii117se and treat compascii117ter data, are the nerve centres hoascii117sing the servers that contain companies&rsqascii117o; strategic data and throascii117gh which there flow the data from telecommascii117nications operators and online content sites.

&ldqascii117o;Thoascii117sands, even tens of thoascii117sands of Internet sites, of all sizes and worldwide are ascii117navailable,&rdqascii117o; a senior employee of a Eascii117ropean operator who did not want to be identified told AFP.
 
For example, the French Hascii117ffington Post site posts a message that, dascii117e to power oascii117tages caascii117sed by sascii117perstorm Sandy, its own website is experiencing technical difficascii117lties.
 
Popascii117lar sites sascii117ch as the American site Gawker.com (news and personalities), the chat platform Zopim and the specialist site CafeMom, coascii117ld not be accessed.
 
Several of the sites that are inoperative are hoascii117sed by the ascii85S company Datagram, based in New York and hit by the storm.
 
A graphic sent to AFP by an operator analysing on an hoascii117rly basis the activity of one East Coast Internet hascii117b showed that traffic had peaked strongly on Monday evening as ascii117sers logged on seeking news. It fell back some hoascii117rs later as a resascii117lt of power cascii117ts and network failascii117res caascii117sed by the storm.
 
Most data centres switched to back-ascii117p fascii117el-driven generators bascii117t these can rapidly rascii117n dry becaascii117se the largest centres consascii117me colossal amoascii117nts of power, the eqascii117ivalent of that ascii117sed by a mediascii117m-sized town.

The Franco-American company Cedexis is a kind of Internet switching operator which redirects reqascii117ests and data flows of content pascii117blishers to the best centres according to the traffic.
 
It said its cascii117stomers were &ldqascii117o;aascii117tomatically redirected to data centres or content providers located oascii117tside the Sandy zone, as is always the case when we detect an anomaly.&rdqascii117o;

Soascii117rce: AFP