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February 11, 2002 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Super Bowl fans trying to vote online for Most Valuable Player at Superbowl.com last Sunday evening waited up to 45 seconds to reach
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both the site and the voting page, ostensibly as it bogged down under the
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increased traffic load, according to reports by Keynote (keynote.com). The
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site was also unable to serve up all of its content during this time,
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indicating that it was stressed and unable to fully meet the demands of
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traffic.
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The SuperBowl.com and MVP pages started to slow soon after the start of the
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game. In the half hour after the game started at 6:00pm EST, SuperBowl.com
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averaged 3.4-5.4 seconds with 100% availability; the MVP page 3.9-4.7
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seconds and 98-100% availability. By 6:45, both had slowed considerably:
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SuperBowl.com to 17.95 seconds; the MVP page to 15.94 seconds. Between
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7:00-7:30pm, SuperBowl.com slowed to as much as 45.85 seconds on average,
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although availability remained very high at 100%.
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Typically, a site under load has a plan to add resources to accommodate the
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load and maintain performance, which is consistent with the performance
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improvement we see at 7:30.
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Keynote also measured the performance of other sports sites and Super Bowl
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advertisers, all of which by and large performed well, both Internet-based
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and brick and mortar, including those with online promotions such as
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Pepsi-Cola.
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HotJobs.com – no discernible performance affect during the game, with
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performance that day and since Friday in the range of 1.0-2.0; availability
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very high: 99-100%. However on Monday, 2/4, performance was consistently
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higher, in the range of 2.5-3.0. Average performance overall: 1.63 seconds;
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99.78% availability.
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Cadillac.com – performance steadily increased from Friday into Monday. On
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Friday, the site was consistently in the 1.2 second range, increasing to
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2.3-2.5 on Saturday, and to 2.5-2.8 on Sunday, getting as high as 3.24
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seconds from 9-11pm on Sunday. On Monday afternoon, the site was
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consistently above 3.0 seconds. Availability, usually 99- 100%, dropped to
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82.4% from 7-9pm during the game. Overall: 2.27 seconds; 98.67%
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availability.
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Warner Brothers (Collateral Damage) – Average performance 0.21 seconds;
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98.85% availability; availability dropped to 56.0% 11:00am-1:00pm on Monday.
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For all other advertisers measured, Keynote saw no discernible performance
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affect either during, prior to or following the game.
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Other sports sites posting news and information about the Super Bowl
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performed very well. CBS Sportsline, Fox Sports and NFL.com all averaged
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under 2.0 seconds with availability exceeding 99.0% during the hours of the
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game and immediately following.
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By comparison, the Keynote Business 40 (KB40) Index, a benchmark for the
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overall health and performance of the Internet, averaged 2.45 seconds and
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89.24% availability during this time.
