Netflix suffers major outage, movies delayed

Sorry, Netflix users: Your next feature presentation will not begin shortly.

Not only was the Netflix Web site down for the count for a full 12 hours on Monday, but its "logistics and delivery" systems were also on the fritz, according to CNET News.com.

That means the most of the DVDs that normally would have been mailed on Monday won't go out until today, Netflix said. The company didn't release any details on why its systems went down.

CNET reports that Monday's meltdown was only the second-longest outage in Netflix's history; the site was down for a whopping 18 hours last July, although movies were still mailed on time.

It's pretty unusual for a major Web site to be down for 12 hours on a weekday; indeed, for most companies, an outage of more than a few minutes constitutes a full-on crisis.

And Netflix itself has been pretty reliable in the past; I'm a subscriber myself, and I almost always get my next DVD two days after mailing in my last one.

Since we're just talking a day's delay for movies-by-mail, as opposed to a BlackBerry or Skype outage, I'm guessing that most subscribers will be forgiving—provided failures like this don't become a regular thing, of course.

Related:
Netflix glitch to delay deliveries [CNET News.com]