UK2.net - which claims to be the "UK's biggest host" - fell over yesterday afternoon, causing disruption for thousands of its customers.

According to a statement on its message board, the company suffered an "unusually long network outage [yesterday] afternoon between, roughly, 1:45pm and 4:15pm."

"This was caused by an as yet unexplained simultaneous failure of a number of critical routers in our network," it said.

The result is that UK2.net's customers lost their Web sites and email - and many aren't happy.

The company has apologised for the "inconvenience this may have caused [its] customers" and claims this is the "first major outage in the uk2.net network…for at least a year".

One UK2.net user told us that yesterday's outage was so severe it was "like they [UK2.net] had been abducted by aliens".

Despite attempts to contact the Web hosting company no one at UK2.net was available for comment. ®