The swearing in of U.S. President Barack Obama and the other presidential inauguration activities generated massive Web traffic Tuesday, leading to site slowdowns but not to a general meltdown of the Internet.
With intense and widespread interest in the ceremonies and festivities, especially President Obama’s oath of office and inaugural address, millions of people had been expected to tune in online.
Big media, news and U.S. government sites streamed events live and prepared special sections for the inauguration, yet some were still caught off-guard and experienced performance problems, mostly between midmorning and 12:30 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time.
Among those experiencing significant slowdowns were the sites of ABC, CBS, Fox Business, the L.A. Times, NBC, National Public Radio, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, according to Keynote Systems, an Internet measurement and testing company. Government sites that buckled under the traffic included those of the White House, the U.S. Senate and the National Park Service, according to Keynote. Gomez, another Web performance-tracking company, also noticed a performance problem at the National Public Radio Web site.
“This was an unprecedented online event. I don’t think we’ve ever seen as many viewers go online to watch an event,” he added. “It’s difficult to prepare for something that’s unprecedented.”
“On a positive note, I had heard predictions that the Internet would crumble, which didn’t happen,” White said.
A group of 40 large Web sites that Keynote routinely tracks also saw, on average, a collective slowdown during the swearing-in ceremony and the inaugural address, likely caused by the demand placed on Internet bandwidth by millions of live video streams, White said.
This inauguration was the first since online video became a mainstream activity, so it wasn’t a surprise that TV networks like CNN and MSNBC, as well as major newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post, provided live broadcasts on their sites.
CNN.com, which will stream live video until the last inaugural ball ends, had, as of 3:30 p.m., generated more than 136 million page views, and its CNN.com Live section had served up more than 21.3 million live video streams globally, setting a new daily streaming record for itself, a spokeswoman said via e-mail. CNN.com Live estimates it served more than 1.3 million concurrent live streams during its peak immediately prior to President Obama’s inaugural address, she said.
(Source: PC World)
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One Response
Given the web usage has been steadily increasing over the past years, it is statistically unlikely that any inaguration would have less viewers than the previous ones, regardless of the person. The whole premise of the article (for a computer magazine, that should know better) is based on statistical misrepresentation (or to put it in our language, “what’s the hidush?”).
Now, a decline in internet usage, THAT would be news.