Hello, We regret to inform you that due to a technical problem Hercules sites are temporarily unavailable.

This not very informative message greets readers when they click on to the web site of Guillemot,, the owner of the Hercules brand name used for retail graphics cards.

So what could the technical problem be? Since last Friday, browsers have been returning messages to URLs within the hercules.com domain along the lines of "we can't find www.hercules.com" (as opposed to "we're busy, go away"). Also http://www.hercules-uk.com/ is online and accessible, which suggests that the technical problem could have something to do with DNS.

A quick whois search shows that Guillemot continues to own the hercules.com domain - there's no sign of decoupling web site address from DNS number.

Update

The Hercules.com web sites were restored on Wednesday, five days after they disappeared from the Web. Guillemot blamed the disruption on "external DNS", handled by a third-party. ®