When asked if the downtime was a result of a hacker attack, Wikimedia dismissed all such rumors. The down time was caused by someone who accidentally cut the network cables that were connecting Wikimedia’s Florida Data Center with the rest of Wikimedia’s network.
The problem was solved the very same day as services and servers were brought back online. Last time Wikipedia experienced downtime was this year back in January when the encyclopedia site went dark on purpose to protest against PIPA and SOPA acts. Their act inspired many big names from the online world to do the same. The bills failed to pass after endless protests all over the world.
Wikipedia was launched in January 2001. Ever since it experienced downtimes very rarely. A significant downtime happened in March 2010 when the site was down because of a cooling problem in Wikimedia’s European data center. This led to a heat condition that finally caused a server to shutdown.
According to Wikipedia’s publicly available traffic statistics the site gets millions of page-views every month. A downtime, no matter how small, would cause serious effects worldwide.
