[ by Melanie Gretchen ]

Bank of America: Is this the beginning of the end?  We hope not.  After technical issues incapacitated web registration service GoDaddy, BofA's site was slow and occasionally unavailable -- which the bank hadn't explained by the end of the day. 

What Happened. The problem began around 10 a.m. ET and continued as late as 6:10 p.m., according to software company Keynote, which provides Internet and mobile cloud testing & monitoring.

• The majority of Bank of America's customers were able to access the site, which remained online throughout the day
• Many customers were unable to connect because of the site's slowness.
• As of about 6 p.m., a "small percentage" of website requests were being fulfilled successfully, but the majority were still met with errors, according to Aaron Rudger, Keynote's senior marketing manager of Web performance

Round 2. This is the second recent glitch the site has experienced.  In October 2011, the bank suffered nearly a full week of outages, later attributed to a combination of technical difficulties and heavier than normal traffic.  At the time, bank had been migrating its online banking to a new platform and deploying new tools for customers when the problems began.

"It's possible that something Bank of America has done on its end, some kind of change, caused the problem.  The bank's homepage looked different before the trouble began." -- Mr. Rudger.

Cause Unknown. What the bank could offer yesterday was a spokesperson's assurance that the company "working to ensure full availability," as well as similar messages via the bank's official Twitter account to customers who complained about the issues.  Specifically, Bank of America's spokeperson fended off suggestions of a cyberattack.

"I can assure you we continuously take proactive measures to secure our systems."

For further details, go to [CNN, 9/18/12].