Inauguration jolts Internet

[bobd0]

I saw this article yesterday. Did a couple of searches and didn't see it here.

I guess this officially qualifies President Obama's inauguration, in modern terms, as a big deal.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/01/20/17532...

President Obama's inauguration sparked significant traffic jams - not only on Washington's streets but in cyberspace as well, according to Web performance monitors. They reported slowdowns at the Web sites run by the White House and the U.S. Senate as well as at several online news outlets.

The fact that the raw numbers of Web users didn't rise to the levels seen on Election Night suggests the problem wasn't the number of people who were online, but the amount of bandwidth each of those people was using.

"It's safe to say that streaming video was a significant contributor to these slowdowns," said Shawn White, director of external operations at Keynote Systems Inc. Another likely factor is the rapid rise of bandwidth-heavy sharing sites such as Flickr and YouTube, he said.

...

The Senate Web site was 60 percent slower than usual today - and 63 percent of the time, attempts to connect didn't go through at all, according to the Keynote figures. Even Keynote's Business Top 40 sites were affected. "What we saw was a sharp slowdown in performance from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.," White said.

"Obviously the Internet is resilient, and it can handle these events, but it might take longer to do what you want to do," he said.

The internet. It didn't exist for three-quarters of my life. Now it's a pulse of civilization. Pretty amazing.

[blogslut]

1. I read a similar story last night

We broke the Internet! Wheee!

But on a serious note, the demand for streaming content will only rise and the telecommunications companies have been plotting to pluck us all like a bunch of chickens. They claim that they need to apply caps on usage and/or charge more for tier-based levels of bandwidth because it will cost them sooooo much money to buttress up the Internet infrastructure. They lie, but not enough people know they are lying because the telecommunications industry certainly isn't going to admit it and their lobbyists have more sway in government than small organizations like the EFF.

The US needs bigger tubes. Communications are in the public trust. The Internet is a new arm of that public trust. Don't let the greedy bastards take it away from us. Support Net Neutrality.

[bobd0]

3. President Obama pledged net neutrality laws during his campaign

I hope he places net neutrality high on his agenda.

[Ilsa]

2. The Inaugural Committee's recipe page took awhile to load.

Lots of people got interested in the menu and recipes for the luncheon.

DU got slow a couple of times.

I bet J.Crew had a slowdown, if it didn't crash altogether.

[bobd0]

4. Obama Girls Crash Retailer's Web Site

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28770773 /



Edit for this really good quote:

While the president faces a crisis in the nation's economy, his wife and daughters may well give a boost to select retailers just by getting dressed each day.

[Ilsa]

5. Just imagine: Election of Sarah Palin could have given a boost to Babies R Us. nt

[polmaven]

6. Which one?

Inauguration jolts Internet

[bobd0]

7. Should I have edited the title to read "Internets"? nt

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

8. Not just the internet... our Cable, yes Cable TV,

the screen froze about a dozen times on multiple stations. I got better picture on DishNetwork, always better, but the Cable never froze like it did last night.

[lies and propaganda]

9. the jCrew site went down for a half hour..

when the makers of the girls outfits were announced.. And for nada because they were especially tailored for them!

[geniph]

10. Tubes were full

Needed more trucks to back up and dump the data. Just ask former-Senator-now-felon Ted Stevens.