Network services provider Cogent experienced network outages this morning, which reportedly caused broader availability problems for web sites and networks that rely on Cogent for connectivity. Traffic on major backbones appears to have returned to normal.

Cogent's network spans 29,500 miles of fiber and connects with 1,750 networks in major U.S. markets. Our monitoring of Cogent's business web site (cogentco.com) shows a brief outage this morning:

A dynamically updating chart of Cogent's web site performance is available. Netcraft offers a web site performance monitoring service that provides similar charts, along with e-mail alerts when an outage occurs.

Domain reseller specialist Melbourne IT said today that it will acquire WebCentral Group for $61 million (about $45.7 million in U.S. dollars), combining two of Australia's most prominent Internet service providers. The deal is the latest in a flurry of acquisitions in the past month as consolidation accelerates in the web hosting and domain industries.

Melbourne IT manages domain names purchased by customers of Yahoo Small Business and Microsoft's new Office Live hosting service, along with many other hosting providers. WebCentral is Australia's largest hosting company as measured by active sites, with 25.8K sites. The deal continues a trend in which domain registrars and web hosts have expanded into one another's specialties.

VeriSign, Inc. will acquire its leading competitor in the market for SSL certificates, GeoTrust Inc., for $125 million in cash, the two companies said today. The deal will solidify VeriSign's dominant position in the market for SSL certificates, which are used to secure web sites for Internet e-commerce. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals, and is expected to close in the second half of this year, the companies said.

VeriSign certificates secure approximately 45 percent of the SSL-enabled sites on the Internet, while GeoTrust certificates are found on 27 percent, according to Netcraft's SSL Survey, which provides detailed analysis of trends in the SSL market. The companies have both announced their support for a new tier of high-security SSL certificates for e-commerce sites, expected to be introduced later this year.

This is the second time VeriSign has acquired its primary competitor in the SSL certificate market. In December 1999 VeriSign paid $575 million to buy Thawte, a South African company that gained popularity by selling certificates at lower prices. At the time the deal was announced, Thawte had a 38.5 percent share of all SSL-enabled sites, to 49 percent for VeriSign - meaning the deal gave VeriSign nearly 88 percent market share.

GeoTrust has been the strongest performer in the SSL market over the past several years, supported by a network of more than 9,000 resellers in 140 countries, including many of the world's major web hosting companies. That reseller channel will complement VeriSign's direct-sales SSL business, currently serving more than 3,000 enterprises worldwide.

The founder of Blue Security says it has shut down its anti-spam service, citing the impact of powerful DDoS attacks on its web site that began in late April. "After recovering from the attack, we determined that once we reactivated the Blue Community, spammers would resume their attacks." the company said on its web site. "We cannot take the responsibility for an ever-escalating cyber war through our continued operations."

When Blue Security's web site was hit by a distributed denial of service attack attack (DDoS) on May 1, the company temporarily repointed www.bluesecurity.com to a blog on Six Apart's TypePad service. The DDoS shifted to the TypePad blog, knocking all of Six Apart's web sites offline for eight hours. The attacks also caused caused network outages for Tucows, which provided Blue Security's DNS service.

Blue Security's web site was unavailable for an extended period on Sunday and Monday, and again this morning, as shown on this performance chart:

A dynamically updating chart of Blue Security's web site performance is available. Netcraft offers a web site performance monitoring service that provides similar charts, along with e-mail alerts when an outage occurs.

Germany's United Internet, the parent company of 1&1 Internet, has acquired leading UK hosting provider Fasthosts for 61.5 million pounds ($114.7 million US). The all-cash deal is the latest in a flurry of major deals in the hosting industry, and continues a trend of consolidation among European hosts.

1&1 expanded into the British hosting market in 2003, and had 280,000 UK customers at the end of 2005. The acquisition of Fasthosts, which was already the top United Kingdom host with 299K active sites, gives the combined company a dominant position in the UK market.

1&1 is already the world's largest hosting company as measured by active sites, and will extend that advantage with the acquisition. The addition of the Fasthosts' customers also brings 1&1 nearly dead even with Go Daddy for bragging rights for the most hostnames. 1&1 Internet houses 5.52 million hostnames this month, compared to 6.06M for Go Daddy. The two providers will likely be in a virtual dead heat once the Fasthosts deal closes, which is scheduled to happen before the end of this month.