Eircom last night confirmed that a ‘catastrophic loss of internet’ was suffered by a large group of users due to what it called ’some shit or other’.

“We don’t really have the first fucking clue”, said a spokesman this morning. “All we know is that turning our super-router off, waiting 10 seconds and then plugging it back in didn’t seem to work. We even gave it a few slaps on the side like you used to do with an old telly but that didn’t fix it either. I’m not sure what else people expect us to do”.

Industry experts think the problem may be that the piece of string between the two broadband tin cans has become frayed but with a bit of luck they can fudge a solution which will see the mega-high speeds of up to 2mb restored to affected users.

This is not the first time Eircom has suffered connection problems. Last week a suspected DOS (Dragons on Switches) attack directed people looking for Facebook and MySpace to sites featuring ladyboys and members of B*Witched engaged in over-18s material, while in early January a hard drive failure saw the whole internet restored from a 1999 back-up.

“I never want to see another Times NewRoman blue link which goes purple when you click it again”, said one irate customer.