The websites of many financial institutions, governments and airlines were briefly suspended on Thursday, includingAnd the website of the Reserve Bank of Australia. A similar global Internet failure has occurred for the second time in less than two weeks.

Some of the network outages that affected institutions such as Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Westpac and ANZ were linked to glitches at Akamai Technologies Ltd., a company that helps customers manage website services, according to people familiar with the matter. The RBA was forced to cancel a planned bond purchase on Thursday, blaming "technical problems." People familiar with the matter spoke on condition of anonymity because what they said involved internal affairs. An Asian representative for Akamai did not respond to emails or phone calls seeking comment.

Downdetector.com, a website tracking company, initially issued an early warning about hundreds of users' complaints about network outages. Customers who complained included Southwest Airlines, Delta Airlines and Automatic Data Processing Inc.. Other sites found to be affected are websites operated by Vanguard, E-Trade and Navy Federal Credit Union.

Many of the sites affected on Thursday were restored within an hour, some of them back to normal after switching to routes from other service providers. Companies such as the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Southwest Airlines said they were investigating the matter, but did not elaborate further. "the disconnection did not affect our operations," Southwest Airlines said in an email in response to questions.