[visualops]

Pictures are not stored on some special servers. They are stored in seperate directories on the servers of the websites or in the case of some advertising they may come from different servers.
Pictures are larger file size than the text of a page, so if there is a traffic issue or other problems, the images may time out and never load. This can be froma problem at your end, or at the website's end. It just so happened that the two of you experienced the same problem. Without having further info such as your ISPs, IP addresses, sites you visited etc, I can't tell you exactly why. I can tell you that it wasn't "the whole web".

[grannie9]

I'm not a techy, but I'm on RR cable.. and AC is on DSL in Spain.. All the pic holding sites went down.. all the pics on FR went down.. All logo's and pics on Drudge, and other news sites all went down.. Hell we're in different countries and we had it hit us at the same time..

He checked all different countries..

[acnielsen guy]

Thank you for the information. I was IM with a someone in Florida and posting pictures. Suddenly all the pics disappeared on two different servers in two different counties at exactly the same time. I immediately checked sites in four counties and no pictures or logos were displays, the text came up immediately.

The person in Florida did the same with the similar results. Up until that time the refresh rate was a couple of seconds. There was no gradual slowing down, which would indicate the build up of traffic, We went from almost instant response to zero, only on logos and pictures. Six or seven minutes later the web returned to normal.