Tuesday was an historic day in the U.S., the day President Obama assumed the duties of the Oval Office. Most of us set aside everything and tuned in as Barack Obama was sworn into office, thinking little of our work lives and professional responsibilities. However, a few people spent that time attempting to support an insane surge in Web traffic, and there were casualties!
The New York Times reported on this issue in its article Online Video of Inauguration Sets Records. Many viewers were denied access to Web streams due to systems overload, and the numbers clearly indicate why. During a nine hour period of time, CNN provided more than 21.3 million video streams, at one time supporting 1.3 million concurrent connections. Akamai's not crying any tears for CNN; they fed seven million+ concurrent streams, which they report is a record day. As you can see in the article, there were more than a few problems associated with these traffic levels.
As I read this article, it occurred to me that this same problem is relevant to Web hosting customers of all sizes. The Slash Dot effect is well documented, and is the stuff of nightmares for Webmasters and server admins alike. It's one thing to plunk down a few hundred bucks for more capacity any given day, week or month; no one likes to do it, but most SMBs can weather a traffic storm without too much difficulty. It's another thing entirely to have to plan for and fund an unprecendented traffic surge for a single day. Even with months of planning time and every indication that Web traffic would be this high or higher, networks were still underprepared, which leads me to believe the answer isn't as simple as "throw more money at the problem."
Frankly, I'm at a loss to come up with a better plan for scaling technology on-the-fly in situations such as these. Coming from the Web design world, I would love to hear from some hosting professionals on this matter. How to you prepare for traffic you cannot anticipate, and how do you handle the economics of scaling to these extremes over such short periods of time? Please share your thoughts!
Comment anonymously or log into your WHIR account
Logging in allows enhanced commenting features (such as external linking) in news, features, blogs and more.