Flickr has been only sporadically available since Sunday morning and was completely off the map for about 5 hours. You may still be experiencing difficulty accessing the site — if you are, try going through www1.flickr.com, www2.flickr.com, www3.flickr.com or www4.flickr.com.

The problem is with our DNS provider whose entire system seems to have collapsed — for the second time this month. We’re in the process of switching providers and this should be completed soon. We apologize for the annoyance (and believe me, it’s even more frustrating for us). Everything is fine on our end and once we regain reliable DNS service the site will again be zippy.

But this definitely underscores how irritating it is when things don’t work, and it’s great motivation for us — it’s made me even more determined to ensure that Flickr is available 24/7/365 and that no problem, internal or external, should get in the way.

Update: The DNS has been resolving fine for the last several days and we’ve almost completed the transition to a more reliable setup for the long term. Again, our apologies!