According to Speedera, the NASA site has received in excess of four billion hits in January, with traffic continuing to grow as the more images are transmitted from the Mars mission.

Speedera says its network has handled peak loads of nearly seven gigabits per second and users have been able to download pages in less than two seconds. Visitors flocking to the NASA site, says Speedera, have not encountered any difficulty downloading the popular images.

"Imagine, four billion hits served and nobody has had to wait in line," said Ajit Gupta, president and CEO of Speedera Networks. "Millions of people are jumping onto the network and finding the wonders of space just a mouse click away - and with virtually instant access. This is a significant milestone for the Internet and for organizations that take advantage of globally distributed on demand computing services to deliver rich Web content to users around the world."

Speedera worked with its content management partner eTouch Systems Corp. to help deliver the NASA Web portal.

NASA representatives said the performance of the Web site has exceeded all expectations.

"The contributions by Speedera and eTouch were fundamental in helping to support the public's access to the images and information from the Mars Exploration Rovers," said Jeanne Holm, portal project manager and chief knowledge architect for NASA. "The four billion hits on NASA's Web sites since January 3 have been served flawlessly through eTouch's content management solution and Speedera's global, on-demand delivery services. Without them, we couldn't bring the surface of Mars to Internet users around the world."

According to Speedera, for the period from January 3 to January 28, the site saw more than 33 million unique visitors, viewing an average of 17 pages during eight minutes spent on the NASA portal.