Mars Mission Makes Internet History

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Mars Mission Makes Internet History
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By Jeff Sanford
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From Web Hosting Monthly, February 2004 edition
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February 23, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY
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REVIEW) — When signals from the Mars lander “Spirit” began arriving
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from across 35 million miles of interplanetary space, the images
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encoded in the data went up almost immediately on the Net, giving
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anyone with a high-bandwidth connection easy access to the data beamed
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from across the solar system.
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It’s the kind of thing that sends
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dedicated space enthusiasts into ecstasy. But the Mars rover mission
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seems to be catching the attention of the public at large as well, with
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traffic at the NASA site (marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov) blowing through any previous records for the space agency’s Web site.
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“We knew it would be of high interest but
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in terms of traffic this is just right off the scale,’ says Brian
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Dunbar, NASA’s Internet services manager, about the busy NASA Web site
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that has been ground zero for coverage of the two Mars rovers, “Spirit”
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and “Opportunity.”
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In fact, Dunbar reports that the site has
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had an incredible four billion hits in the three weeks around the
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landings, which is far more than the 2.8 billion hits the site received
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over the whole of 2003. “Everyone publishes stats and I know they can
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be slippery but I still can’t help but believe it will be the biggest
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event in the history of the Net,” he says.
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No wonder the public has been paying
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attention. Unlike previous public space exploration events-often
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limited to just a static TV image-the latest Mars rover missions come
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with rich Web content attached. Of the 32 million people who have
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visited the NASA site some 250,000 have downloaded a NASA application
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that lets the surfer maneuver a simulated Spirit rover through a
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virtual map derived from real data. There are also the raw hi-res
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images, live streaming of press conferences and a broadcast of the
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landings, which saw 48,000 people “tuning” into the site.
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But while the public waits for the rovers
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to transmit evidence of water on the red planet, there has been an
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incredible effort going on behind the scenes to keep the data flowing.
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Hosting an interplanetary event of this magnitude is no walk through
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the park says Gordon Smith, vice president of marketing with Speedera
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Networks Inc. (speedera.com), the company charged with making sure the network doesn’t disintegrate under the load.
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“The challenges have to do with the sheer
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volume of traffic, much of which involves delivery of live streaming
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flawlessly and immediately,” says Smith. “There’s a wide variety of
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stuff, Web page requests, hi-res images and streaming. It is complex
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and unforgiving task, especially the live streaming. Needless to say
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there are a lot of people putting in a lot of hours.”
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At the height of the webcast of the
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second landing, Smith says the company was streaming up to four
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gigabytes per second, with stats showing average download time of less
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than a second, a result perhaps not quite as technically impressive as
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the rovers themselves but no small accomplishment either.
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Speedera, of course, specializes in
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providing one-off event hosting ability through a distributed network
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of 1,300 servers in 20 countries that allows content to be served up
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close to the surfer. “We’re not a traditional hosting company. We have
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a ‘point of presence’ on many different networks and run an overlay
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network on the global network that provides a high amount of
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redundancy,” says Smith.
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That model has allowed the company to
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ramp up room on the network for a group of A-list clients such as the
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launch of Microsoft’s X-Box, Wimbledon and American Idol. “The client
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would never be able to handle an event like this. The equivalent would
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be building something like the national telephone system for their own
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internal phone system,” says Smith.
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Speedera has had quick success since
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setting out in April of 2000. It was a precipitous time to enter the
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online world but the late start meant the company missed the bubble and
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the resulting network overbuild (and accompanying debt), giving
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Speedera a streamlined corporate identity that led to being named the
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second fastest-growing private company in Silicon Valley in each of the
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past three years by PricerwaterhouseCoopers. Most importantly, cash
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flow turned positive in the fourth quarter of 2003, making the
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successful hosting of the Mars landing an extra feather in the cap of
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the company.
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Smith, however, was quick to characterize
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the landing as a victory for the industry at large, as it marks a new
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milestone in terms of technical hosting ability. “Not just NASA, but
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from the perspective of the industry as a whole, this is an enormous
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event. It’s only become possible to do something on this scale in the
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last few years,” he says.
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But perhaps the biggest victory goes to
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NASA, which is still operating under the dark cloud that descended on
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the organization when the shuttle Columbia burned up on re-entry one
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year ago. With the existence of the agency being called into question
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by critics, connecting with the population at large was seen as a vital
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task for the survival of the organization.
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The all-out Web strategy, which has
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allowed the organization to involve the public, marks a change in
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tactics for the space agency. Up until last year the NASA homepage was
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sitting on a single server in the basement of headquarters, ruling out
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the possibility of a Web event like the Mars landings. At the time of
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the Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997, when NASA registered just 48
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million hits, NASA engineers had to cobble together a volunteer network
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of reflector sites to handle those hits.
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But that kind of quaint homespun approach
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to Web hosting is likely no longer possible considering the expansion
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in the size of the Web and the number of users since 1997. Consider
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that between 3 am Saturday and 9:30 am Tuesday, the NASA site received
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916 million hits and handed out 154 million Web pages for a total of 15
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terabytes of information distributed to users. If one wonders what the
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future of the Web events looks like, that’s it.
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Those involved with the project say
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there’s a higher calling here than simple terrestrial concerns.
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Considering the rovers may answer the question of whether water existed
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on Mars, helping us answer the question about possibility of life may
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have existed there, the journey ultimately contributes to an answer
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about the bigger question: Are we alone in the universe?
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The magnitude of that question has imbued
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those working on the project with a higher sense of purpose. As Smith
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says, “It’s something more than just hosting a lingerie fashion show.”
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In fact, some dedicated Web followers of the mission have become so
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attached that they reported feeling slightly depressed when the rover
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“Spirit” stopped sending signals because of a technical glitch a few
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days after it landed. A bit of an extreme reaction perhaps, but Dunbar
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says it was a heartwarming one. “It’s been gratifying to see the
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interest in this.”
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