Some of Akamai Technologies' customers experienced Web site performance problems this morning because of a bug in one of the content delivery network's software tools.

"There was an isolated issue between 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. where multiple Akamai customers experienced intermittent performance," Jeff Young, a spokesman for the Cambridge, Mass.-based firm told internetnews.com.

The problem did not result from an outside attack, Young said, but was caused by a bug in Akamai's "back-end content control management" software, which allows customers to purge outdated content.

When the problem was identified, the tool was disabled and service levels returned to normal, Young said.

"We're putting in place measures to return that content management tool to normal and we're working so this doesn't occur in the future," Young said.

Young declined to identify the sites that were impacted. The company has some high-profile customers whose sites log millions of hits, including Yahoo!, Columbia House, MSNBC and Terra Lycos.

A spokesman for Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo!, which re-upped with Akamai in 2002, was not immediately available for comment. Akamai competes with Mirror Image, Netli and others in the content delivery space.

The company has been working to position itself in the on-demand world. Last month, it partnered with imaging platform specialist Scene 7 to offer utility-style dynamic imaging that lets Web sites plug-and-play image manipulations as they need the services on their sites.