5 ms·

Debate: Can the Internet handle big breaking news?

3 points by aj 17y ago

SwellJoe 17y ago
No! We clearly need television! And newspapers! And teletypes! And carrier pigeons! And Paul Revere! Twitter went down (which never happens!), so obviously, the Internet simply can't handle the demands of delivering the news. OK, I'm calmer now that I've got that out.
KaiP 17y ago
"Even Google was unable to handle the load." I was under the impression that Google's problem was due to an automated attack response, not due to bandwidth issues. Also, the article cited: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10273325-93.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10273325-93.html has been updated to say that only CNN "appeared sluggish." It may be true that the news on the Internet was crippled, but there's basically no hard evidence suggesting it from the source he cited.
moe 17y ago
The whole article is just fluff and filler-text, not backed up by any facts whatsoever. He mentions a few websites going down (which is not "the internet") and he falsely claims google had trouble (which still wouldn't be "the internet" even if it was true). But this is a systemic problem with the Internet, or perhaps put more accurately, the Web. The more people who demand the service provided by an information Web site, the harder it gets for that site to provide that information Yeah right. Actually that's a systemic problem with that particular website then, not with the internet. He completely misses the point about the distributed nature of the internet: "Big breaking news" spreads like wildfire across many sites. So when CNN (not the internet) buckles under load then there is a good chance that you'll still be able to fetch it from a few thousand other sites.
sneakums 17y ago
Well, the Internet services I used while I merrily ignored the vile circus around Mr. Jackson's death all kept working great.
akie 17y ago
It just did...
kierank 17y ago
The internet handled it fine. Certain websites didn't. An automatic scaling system using something like Amazon Web Services and a lot of varnish caches would have handled this fine. Unfortunately certain blogging platforms decide to have dozens of queries per page which really slows things down.

3 points by aj 17y ago

No! We clearly need television! And newspapers! And teletypes! And carrier pigeons! And Paul Revere! Twitter went down (which never happens!), so obviously, the Internet simply can't handle the demands of delivering the news. OK, I'm calmer now that I've got that out.

KaiP 17y ago

"Even Google was unable to handle the load." I was under the impression that Google's problem was due to an automated attack response, not due to bandwidth issues. Also, the article cited: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10273325-93.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10273325-93.html has been updated to say that only CNN "appeared sluggish." It may be true that the news on the Internet was crippled, but there's basically no hard evidence suggesting it from the source he cited.

moe 17y ago

The whole article is just fluff and filler-text, not backed up by any facts whatsoever. He mentions a few websites going down (which is not "the internet") and he falsely claims google had trouble (which still wouldn't be "the internet" even if it was true). But this is a systemic problem with the Internet, or perhaps put more accurately, the Web. The more people who demand the service provided by an information Web site, the harder it gets for that site to provide that information Yeah right. Actually that's a systemic problem with that particular website then, not with the internet. He completely misses the point about the distributed nature of the internet: "Big breaking news" spreads like wildfire across many sites. So when CNN (not the internet) buckles under load then there is a good chance that you'll still be able to fetch it from a few thousand other sites.

sneakums 17y ago

Well, the Internet services I used while I merrily ignored the vile circus around Mr. Jackson's death all kept working great.

akie 17y ago

It just did...

kierank 17y ago

The internet handled it fine. Certain websites didn't. An automatic scaling system using something like Amazon Web Services and a lot of varnish caches would have handled this fine. Unfortunately certain blogging platforms decide to have dozens of queries per page which really slows things down.