A Web site blackout yesterday prevented Cisco Systems Inc. customers from retrieving 21 critical patches for about three hours yesterday, shortly after the fixes were posted by the network hardware maker.

Updates for nearly two dozen vulnerabilities in IOS, formerly known as Internetwork Operating System and the controlling software for most Cisco routers and switches, were released around 11 a.m. EDT Wednesday. Cisco.com, however, went dark around 2 p.m. EDT and didn't come back online until about 5 p.m. Today, Cisco blamed "human error" for the site swooning, and added that the severity of the resulting electrical overload prevented the expected redundancies from kicking in.

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