It has been confirmed that international video hosting website Youtube was briefly unavailable today.

The website was displaying a 502 Server error when users attempted to access it this morning. This was an international problem, with numerous Twitter users reporting the same issue.

502 Server errors are usually due to poor IP communication among back end server computers. The problem could however be attributed to an issue with international connectivity or server overload.

There has been no explanation as yet from Google, which owns Youtube, as to the nature of the problem.

Youtube was localised in South Africa in May this year, allowing users to access the website using local bandwidth.