Tiscali UK was knocked out this afternoon after the ISP came under attack from Internet saboteurs.

The company experienced a massive Denial of Service assault that downed the ISP's portal, Net access and email services.

However, in a statement the company said: "Tiscali has been subject to an external attack on our network.

"However, we have taken steps to identify the source and isolate the problem.

"Service has been restored for Tiscali customers accessing the portal and services through a Tiscali dial-up but the portal is currently unavailable to non-Tiscali subscribers.

"Customers can use webmail, outlook, and browse the Internet but may be experiencing occasional delays in accessing the Tiscali portal," it said.

The ISP has placed customer information on its status line and status board while its customer service team has also been handling calls concerning the matter.

Tiscali has apologised to its customers who have been hit by the outage. ®