“To the best of our knowledge this is the biggest government event in the history of the Internet,” says Glenn Mahone, assistant administrator for the office of public affairs at NASA. “We’ve passed the peak traffic for the IRS Web site during tax season and for NOAA’s site during Hurricane Isabel last fall. Since the rovers’ missions will last 90 days each, it’s possible this will wind up being the biggest single event in Internet history.”
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The NASA sites recorded 109 million hits in the first 24 hours after the Spirit rover first landed on Mars. In a few days, that number had jumped to 916 million hits. Speedera Networks (speedera.com) delivered the Mars content over its global network in partnership with Netherlands-based Capcave.
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“What’s particularly gratifying for us is that the results from our customer satisfaction survey during the peak traffic were the highest we’ve ever received,” says Brian Dunbar, Internet services manager for NASA.” So not only were we serving more people than ever, they told us we were doing the best job we’ve ever done.”
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International visitors, according to NASA, have made up 20 percent of all traffic.
