The UK suffered an Internet outage this afternoon after a switch at the London Internet Exchange (LINX) went tits up.

The incident occurred at around 2.35 this afternoon at LINX's Telecity centre at Millharbour, in London's Docklands.

Those hit by the problem would have had difficulty with their email and accessing the Web.

The scale of the incident is not known although one insider told us that corporate customers were "hopping mad".

LINX - an Internet exchange point based in London - said all it members (outfits such as BT, Easynet and Thus) were hit by the fault but that it only lasted for around half an hour.

That said, some users would have experienced a delay getting their Web access and email running back to normal once the problem was resolved.

Others, though, would have been unaffected by the problem.

"This was not a major outage," said a spokeswoman for LINX. ®