5 ms·

I didn't see in the Twitter thread--can anyone tell me what was driving this huge spike in traffic on Gov.uk? I'm not in the UK so I'm not up to the minute with

by a2tech 6y ago

I didn't see in the Twitter thread--can anyone tell me what was driving this huge spike in traffic on Gov.uk? I'm not in the UK so I'm not up to the minute with political announcements.

mytailorisrich 6y ago
Not only did the PM announced a new full lockdown in a TV address, as others have already said, but he also specifically gave a gov.uk URL as way to check details and rules. Huge audience plus that equalled massive traffic spike.
- dtf 6y ago
  Yet, it seemed that the guidance the PM mentioned wasn't online at the moment that he mentioned it. Like many, I was hitting F5 repeatedly on this page waiting for a document that didn't seem to be there, eager to know restrictions on various aspects of life. But the /coronavirus page just contained stale advice from December. Eventually at 8:15pm, somebody found a link to a PDF of the new guidance and posted it on Twitter: "This has all been done with such crashing urgency that they haven’t even been able to transpose the PDF version of the guidance into the website yet, it is here:" https://twitter.com/AdamWagner1/status/1346188409300258816 https://twitter.com/AdamWagner1/status/1346188409300258816 [this is how it played out for me at least, did anyone else see this differently?]
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Nice. I guess that this only increased the spike.
EE84M3i 6y ago
There is a new lockdown: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55538937 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55538937 specifically, this would seem to coincide with the PM addressing the nation on TV.
- dingaling 6y ago
  The sort of thing that multicast was intended to solve, instead of everyone requesting their own stream of the same data. But MC never gained traction even though most ISPs in the UK are now IPv6-enabled.
  - AaronFriel 6y ago
    That's because people want to start videos from the beginning and seek around, not just watch TV. Every time I see this comment about multicast, I think people are missing the point of the internet.
  - mprovost 6y ago
    IPv6 doesn't have anything to do with multicast - it works fine on v4. For some definition of works - the only industry where I've heard of it being used extensively is finance. For live events like press conferences or sports this is already solved with broadcasting.
    - iso1210 6y ago
      > the only industry where I've heard of it being used extensively is finance. > For live events like press conferences or sports this is already solved with broadcasting. 16 million people watched that press conference on BBC TV, broadcasting is very efficent at getting live pictures out. The BBC did experiment with multicast in the past, but CDNs seem to be a more scalable solution ironically. However in this specific case, the pictures actually left downing street via multicast (SDI form camera into encoder, MPEG-TS over multicast to the studio, back to SDI to get encoded on whichever output chain it is - Terrestial, Satelite, Cable, online) Indeed the standard to replace SDI (2110) is built around multicast, broadcast certainly uses multicast a fair bit.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - gsnedders 6y ago
    This wasn't any stream of the announcement driving this; this was people looking up statistics and information about COVID-19 and related restrictions.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
parthdesai 6y ago
from the top active pages table, it looks it's due to the new lockdown in England.
julian55 6y ago
Prime Minister Boris Johnson announcing another lockdown.
Turukawa 6y ago
UK Prime Minister announced new COVID England-wide lockdown https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/05/covid-lockdown-in-england-likely-in-place-until-march-gove-warns https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/05/covid-lockdown...
- KineticLensman 6y ago
  I was one of the people whose first reaction was to look on gov.uk to understand the scope of the new lockdown, rather than some rehash of it in the media. It took me just two mouse clicks (open gov.uk favourite, click on a link [0] near the top of the page) to find this info. This is just awesome. [0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lockdown-stay-at-home https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lockdown-stay-at-home
  - Triv888 6y ago
    > A support bubble is different to a childcare bubble and a Christmas bubble.
  - antpls 6y ago
    Even if it's just static pages, one must admit the website is blazing fast, even on mobile.

by a2tech 6y ago

I didn't see in the Twitter thread--can anyone tell me what was driving this huge spike in traffic on Gov.uk? I'm not in the UK so I'm not up to the minute with political announcements.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

Not only did the PM announced a new full lockdown in a TV address, as others have already said, but he also specifically gave a gov.uk URL as way to check details and rules. Huge audience plus that equalled massive traffic spike.

dtf 6y ago
Yet, it seemed that the guidance the PM mentioned wasn't online at the moment that he mentioned it. Like many, I was hitting F5 repeatedly on this page waiting for a document that didn't seem to be there, eager to know restrictions on various aspects of life. But the /coronavirus page just contained stale advice from December. Eventually at 8:15pm, somebody found a link to a PDF of the new guidance and posted it on Twitter: "This has all been done with such crashing urgency that they haven’t even been able to transpose the PDF version of the guidance into the website yet, it is here:" https://twitter.com/AdamWagner1/status/1346188409300258816 https://twitter.com/AdamWagner1/status/1346188409300258816 [this is how it played out for me at least, did anyone else see this differently?]
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  Nice. I guess that this only increased the spike.

EE84M3i 6y ago

There is a new lockdown: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55538937 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55538937 specifically, this would seem to coincide with the PM addressing the nation on TV.

dingaling 6y ago
The sort of thing that multicast was intended to solve, instead of everyone requesting their own stream of the same data. But MC never gained traction even though most ISPs in the UK are now IPv6-enabled.
- AaronFriel 6y ago
  That's because people want to start videos from the beginning and seek around, not just watch TV. Every time I see this comment about multicast, I think people are missing the point of the internet.
- mprovost 6y ago
  IPv6 doesn't have anything to do with multicast - it works fine on v4. For some definition of works - the only industry where I've heard of it being used extensively is finance. For live events like press conferences or sports this is already solved with broadcasting.
  - iso1210 6y ago
    > the only industry where I've heard of it being used extensively is finance. > For live events like press conferences or sports this is already solved with broadcasting. 16 million people watched that press conference on BBC TV, broadcasting is very efficent at getting live pictures out. The BBC did experiment with multicast in the past, but CDNs seem to be a more scalable solution ironically. However in this specific case, the pictures actually left downing street via multicast (SDI form camera into encoder, MPEG-TS over multicast to the studio, back to SDI to get encoded on whichever output chain it is - Terrestial, Satelite, Cable, online) Indeed the standard to replace SDI (2110) is built around multicast, broadcast certainly uses multicast a fair bit.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gsnedders 6y ago
  This wasn't any stream of the announcement driving this; this was people looking up statistics and information about COVID-19 and related restrictions.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

parthdesai 6y ago

from the top active pages table, it looks it's due to the new lockdown in England.

julian55 6y ago

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announcing another lockdown.

Turukawa 6y ago

UK Prime Minister announced new COVID England-wide lockdown https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/05/covid-lockdown-in-england-likely-in-place-until-march-gove-warns https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/05/covid-lockdown...

KineticLensman 6y ago
I was one of the people whose first reaction was to look on gov.uk to understand the scope of the new lockdown, rather than some rehash of it in the media. It took me just two mouse clicks (open gov.uk favourite, click on a link [0] near the top of the page) to find this info. This is just awesome. [0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lockdown-stay-at-home https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lockdown-stay-at-home
- Triv888 6y ago
  > A support bubble is different to a childcare bubble and a Christmas bubble.
- antpls 6y ago
  Even if it's just static pages, one must admit the website is blazing fast, even on mobile.