Are Internet News Sites Ready for Major World News? 304
An anonymous reader asks: "Heading says it all really - are Internet news websites ready for the next big world event? news.bbc.co.uk already switches format under heavy load (not sure if this is automatic or not) and i'm sure some other sites do the same. But should a major world event take place in the coming months/years, the Internet is going to be the primary news source for many millions of people, particularly those without access to a quality television news service. How will / can it cope?"
Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Uh oh (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Uh oh (Score:2)
Re:^^It's supposed to be funny!! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:^^It's supposed to be funny!! (Score:3, Insightful)
won't replace TV (Score:3, Insightful)
News sites failed to cope with the load - millions of people trying to access the same sites meant that no amount of bandwidth could cope with demand.
For this reason, I don't think that the web is going to replace television as a source of live news coverage anytime soon.
Re:won't replace TV (Score:5, Interesting)
I preferred to read
Re:won't replace TV (Score:3, Interesting)
I tried several other news sites (MSNBC, ABCNews, etc) only to find the same congestion.
No, the internet isn't ready to handle the bandwidth associated with millions of people logging on to get the latest information.
Which leads me to a question: Any *decent* (and FREE) newstickers out there that are totally customizable, and run under Windows? I already checked SourceForge.. I've been using Netropa, but its not set up to allow me to add whatever channels I want. I tried Swen (from Tucows) but it doesn't work at all..
Re:won't replace TV (Score:4, Informative)
Sept 11 is just on the left of graph at the bottom. Interestingly a normal day's traffic is now greater than the sept 11th spike, maybe they could handle major news events.
(I can't think what the early april spike is, but the raised traffic in june/july is the world cup)
Re:won't replace TV (Score:2)
The general increase since summer may be due to the increasing availability of broadband connections in the UK, or thousands of students who normally look at the site through the academic caches getting summer jobs (though I doubt it).
Re:won't replace TV (Score:3, Interesting)
Internet not the best medium for broadcasts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Internet not the best medium for broadcasts (Score:5, Insightful)
What you need. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What you need. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've got one of the AM/FM models and it's quite good and saves having to get batteries. They also do shortwave models.
Re:What you need. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What you need. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What you need. (Score:2)
Did it do that badly last time? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seemed fine to me (not that I was thinking much about the quality). Was it really that bad?
Re:Did it do that badly last time? (Score:2)
Re:Did it do that badly last time? (Score:2)
Why... (Score:5, Funny)
Why? Are you planning one?
Al.Re:Why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Preparing for the unpredicatable (Score:2, Insightful)
maybe... (Score:2)
Yup (Score:2)
With news that big... (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Resistance to large amounts of sudden traffic.
2. Meta-news from other sites.
Simple really.
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fat chicks need love too [wallpaperscoverings.com]
In a word, no. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure that they have taken steps to improve things in the future but, there is only so much that you can do, or at least do cost effectively. There is no substitute for hardware and bandwidth but, maintaining enough to support the entire planet at one critical moment in time, that may or may not come, is not cost effective.
When the time comes, the news sites will buckle under the load, just as the telephone system does. The best source for news, during times of disaster are television and more so, radio. Even in the most remote places, you can still get radio and with new satellite radio, you can get it anywhere.
Re:In a word, no. (Score:2)
Backend ? (Score:2, Interesting)
If you mean a major bandwith spike, then where is the weakest link? Will the pipe fill up before the processing power is toped out?
I know that some ISP's had their bandwidth bursting at the seams during 911, so even if there was nothing wrong with the news/internet/network - the ISP was fragile.
Not really a post - in that I am not giving much in the way of answers, but just trying to ask the right questions. There is so much to consider in such a situation, rather than looking (drooling?) at their massive server farm(s), don't forget about the pipe that feeds it(them).
Its all in the architecture (Score:3, Interesting)
Thats how they coped, my old mucker.
Ananova (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheers,
Ian
September 11th (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, there's a lot of dark fibre around, so the capacity is there if it's really needed. Once the current recession is over, we can expect to go back to the days of massive overprovision and redundancy as content and bandwidth providers seek to build in capacity to handle peaks. What will really help is multicasting for video streams, and well-designed caches at ISPs.
Re:September 11th (Score:4, Interesting)
You're probably right; the report notes that the infrastructure was fine but the web servers were overwhelmed. Lighting up that dark fibre would make it easier to deploy Akamai-like solutions to replicate content to distribution points closer to the consumer.
Re:September 11th (Score:2)
You know, I remember reading somewhere that Danni Ashe of Danni's Hard Drive [Link to your own porn, you wankers] fame was giving lectures on high-availability websites somewhere. Can't remember where I read it though.
Could just have been invited by geeks who thought she might give the lecture with her tits out...!
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
They can do it the same way I cope when my power goes off... A cheep battery operated shortwave radio tuned to the BBC or other quality station. IMHO, I'm pretty sure if they can't get access to a TV then what chances do they have at getting the internet?
People in offices perhaps? (Score:2, Informative)
Sept 11th had valuable lessons (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, it in part led to Google News. I'm actually kinda comfortable with Google handling news, as I think if such an event happens again, Google can just cache the important news.
TV and radio, though, will likely always have the advantage that viewer load doesn't affect them. So, even if someday we move beyond traditional TV/Radio broadcasting, emergency radio broadcasting should be kept in some form.
Time to wake up. (Score:5, Funny)
Gee, that's pretty much everyone.
September 11th (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:September 11th (Score:3, Insightful)
The "major catastrophe" it is designed to survive is something that physically destroys or isolates many nodes of the network. This was a simple traffic spike.
Re:September 11th (Score:2)
Re:September 11th (Score:2)
I've often heard this story that the Internet was designed to withstand a nuclear war, but I'm sure we've all experienced the Internet failing on a pleasant summer's day
Re:September 11th (Score:2, Interesting)
IRC, while admitedly incorporating a client/server architecture, is still more peer to peer (it is, after all, Internet relay chat) than a news site (which is completely server/client).
The "failures" were those parts of the 'net that didn't obey p2p, and the "successes" were the systems that did.
Even Kazaa lit up with ripped/pirated CNN broadcasts. I didn't have access to a TV that day, either. I got my footage from Kazaa at School.
Re:September 11th (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with the web is that it is graphics intensive. When you go to CNN, you have to download a ton of graphics, you have to initiate a new connection with the server on each request, etc. With IRC, you don't have any of the graphics and you don't have to reconnect to it in order to get updates 5 minutes later.
The history of IRC is pretty spotty. Most of the times it can be pretty lame and pointless, but it has always become a useful communications tool. I hope this practice continues.
Re:September 11th (Score:2)
Modified Delivery Mechanisms (Score:2)
Yes and No (Score:5, Interesting)
So I must say, find some smaller news site and bookmark them. When your big-shot news site will crawl under load, just go to the small one and you will get your news.
BTW if you just want nice video, the Intenet is not the place to go, turn on your TV, you'll get far better image quality and you don't have to wait until the video is buffered.
9/11 proved it can't (Score:3, Interesting)
Being a Brit, the BBC was the first place I turned to for news and basically the whole thing ground to a halt and that was despite the BBC News outfit having upgraded systems substantially to cope with the 2001 UK General Election. Both the UK and US mirror were swamped and basically stopped working. Interestingly the US Mirror site was in New York, not far from the WTC, and despite the fact the power was lost in the entire area, the servers kept going for several days on backup generators until those generators died due to the dust.
It tended to be the second-tier news service like Ananova [ananova.com] that could cope, simply because in times of crisis people will always turn to familiar names first.. the BBC, NBC, CBS, CNN etc.
I seem to remember that the low-graphics option came after 9/11, but it's only a partial solution to the problem.. several times since then the BBC have switched to low-graphics but there haven't been any events of the magnitude of 9/11 since then.
Look at it this way.. lets say the US has 50 million office workers with access to the Internet (a pure guesstimate) and they all try to access the same news sites within a window of 30 minutes. On 9/11 people were trying to download videos of the attacks so they could understand what was going on - don't forget that those now familiar images we all know now were completely unthinkable. This combination of huge numbers of users and very high demand for streaming video is almost impossible to keep up with.
In short, on 9/11 the web let us down and the only people who knew what was going on were those with access to televisions. The world has not moved on that much in the past 12 months, so basically the same thing will happen all over again if (God forbid) the same thing happens all over again..
Re:9/11 proved it can't (Score:2)
cnn does it with load-balancing (Score:3, Interesting)
http://robots.cnn.com
however, I still think that the best medium for broadcast is not an interactive media like the Internet, but a one-way media like radio or TV;
Anyway, I would rather prefer a text-only information source like during the Gulf War the BBC did on IRC. But I may be wrong on that.
9/11/01 and CNN (Score:2, Informative)
Needless to say, cnn.com really had to get more servers into production quickly. They worked with Sun to get several hundred servers on site and running.
I don't know why cnn.com had such an upgrade strategy, but it is what happened....
Proxies (Score:2)
At the same time maybe the HTTP procotol needs a version that is capable of UDP broadcasts in special cases?
News from all over (Score:5, Interesting)
In a time of crisis, is it really necessary to know the details of a major world event immediately? If a nuke goes off somewhere, I'm not too concerned about who did it--I'm driving to some remote place, THEN I'll start asking the questions.
On Sept. 11th, what did we know for certain:
*4 planes were hijacked
*Two towers fell
*The Pentagon was hit
*A plane went down in PA
everything else was mere specualtion at the time, and everything above could be read by headlines alone.
Just a thought,
Re:News from all over (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can't get to the site, how can the Google spider?
Re:News from all over (Score:2)
Multicast ! (Score:5, Interesting)
However, ISP and users are confronted to a chicken-and-egg problem: ISP pretend there is no demand for multicast, so that can't justify the investment in increased NOC knowledge, users don't know what it is, and content providers have no support from ISP or user.
Multicast is however the scalable answer for live broadcast and scheduled replay, it's been there for years and I do not loose hope that it will be better used one day.
Re:Multicast ! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Multicast ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting to think that streaming audio and video could be easier on bandwidth than websites...
--Dan
Distributed news sites? (Score:2, Interesting)
Flash crowds (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at it this way: in a primative society, a clan or village would usually have a storyteller or sage who gathered the news of the world in story form and re-told as appropriate. We should not be supprised that it takes millions, perhaps even hundreds of millions of people to be the story-tellers to 6 billion (that's a US billion).
If the Internet had a higher percentage of useful sites for news (not just talking jpeg-heads, but innovative ways of conveying the STORIES that the news represents), then no one of them would be loaded down and the backbones would be the only bottleneck. Notice that so many of us flocked to Slashdot when the towers fell? Wonder why? Because Slashdot, for good or ill, is our community's storyteller, and we instinctively come here to understand how our community is reacting.
Why you NEED a radio (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't have a portable AM/FM radio, or even better a shortwave receiver, then get one TODAY. Get some spare battteries for it as well.
The simple fact is if you want to hear what's going on during a "major event" radio is the best way to do it. And you have evacuate in a hurry, you sure as hell aren't going to be taking your 60" flat screen TV with you. You want pictures, wait for the evening news, if you want to know what's going on NOW, get a radio.
Even better, get yourself licensed as a ham radio operator so you can be part of the communication solution if needed (yes, amateur radio is still important, even today).
I don't think they exist... (Score:3, Funny)
Isn't that a oxymoron?
CNN, others... during 9/11 got it right (Score:4, Interesting)
They switched to an old-school, how-the-web-used-to-be, no-nonsense design. It was basic HTML, with some embedded pictures that contribued to the information. No frills, no ads, no sidebars about the latest crap-news, just the information we were looking for. Needless to say, it also ate a lot less bandwidth.
Of course, they were down part of the morning, but when they came back in the altered format, I thought it was a great move. A few other sites were doing the same thing, and I think they'll remember the technique for the next time something big goes down (hopefully something pleasant next time? I can hope...)
More tech issues in mainstream (Score:3, Insightful)
To state the obvious, the major news sites would have to have not only leaner pages, but also have the infrastructure to withstand a slashdotting-with-hair-on-it. Leaner, lower bandwidth web pages benefit every one, every day, but for daily needs the infrastructure is going to be expensive overkill.
In contrast, more of the tech sites were already used to heavy loads and I would guess that his brought in a larger than normal number of new and infrequent visitors. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed that after that many mainstream newspapers, magazines, and radio magazines started to carry more cutting edge tech info and topics and providing in a much more timely manner - days instead of weeks or months.
It would be interesting to map how much the coverage and timeliness of tech issues by the mainstream press changed, when it changed, and how much was related to being able stay on line.
Re:More tech issues in mainstream (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdotting-with-hair-on-it?
You mean... A horde of rabid Cowboy Neals attacking innocent news web sites???
*shudder*
I think I am going to be sick...
ISPs are the weakest link (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not talking about some sort of damage to the communications network. I'm talking about ISPs that enforce strict rules on how many of their customers can get online simultaneously. They are the real threat to the Net as a primary source of urgent information, and it's all about money. They take on millions of customers but total capacity is measured in tens of thousands.
For example, on September 11th there were a few hours when tall buildings in London and other British cities were being evacuated, but many people over here couldn't get online to access vital information because our ISPs have notoriously low capacity and only allow a small percentage of their customers online at any one time.
Obviously this is a greater threat in rural areas because the only available connection method is dial-up.
Internet? Well, HTTP sucks, but SMTP rocks! (Score:5, Interesting)
During the New York tragedy, much of the traffic on those lists was along the lines of "I can't get to the major sites because the web is clagged solid - can anyone tell me the latest?". And thankfully for a couple of days, the rules about straying from the topic of the mailing list were ignored.
Granted, many of the complaints were actually related to individual corporate firewalls, http gateways and proxy servers, rather than the sites themselves, but the situation stands: for whatever reason, you can't get to the site. Our web proxy fell over under the load, but our SMTP gateway just kept on going. And so did most others around the world. And I imagine that NNTP stuff worked just as well the SMTP stuff.
Remember folks, the Internet is a lot more than the Web!
Well, if the world would just get multicast enable (Score:4, Insightful)
The trouble is that not everyone is multicast enabled, but this shows real promise in handling news and emergency information over the Internet.
interesting fact (Score:3, Informative)
It's organisations like that which will assist in the next big news item.
-- james
/. Quality Assurance (Score:2)
How sites seem to cope now (Score:5, Informative)
When we're looking at scale, though, it's useful for us to remember that these sites can handle way more traffic than even the typical slashdotting can deliver. Most breaking major news can be handled by them with only a little bit of slowdown. It's only the 9/11-scale events that can really bring the news sites to their knees - so lets hope that we don't have to see anything that brings on a overload scenario for the big news sites.
The other thing to consider is that most of the news providers are still investing some money in their infrastructure - just less than before. It's very well possible that a 9/11-scale event might not hammer the servers the way they were hammered last year. A lot of web sysadmins learned valuable lessons that day that I'm sure have been applied since then.
Re:How sites seem to cope now (Score:3, Informative)
Unless... (Score:2, Funny)
9/11 was not the first Internet News stress test (Score:5, Interesting)
Still, I'll give it to Slashdot and to IRC. I spent most of 9/11 on IRC transcribing what was being reported on CNN, since for a while the site was pretty much useless. A bunch of us where also taking screen captures and posting them online so people could see the horror. I still have captures of the first flyover of the Pentagon, which is less than 10 miles from my office.
Usenet Example: news.announce.important (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Usenet Example: news.announce.important (Score:2, Informative)
17 Sep 2002 Blind Vigilantes
23 Apr 2002 Art and all that Jazz
16 Oct 2001 My car was recently struck by a United Parcel
Maybe not a such a great source of breaking news - there are no Sept 11-related posts at all.
Yeah, there is (Score:2)
When there are big world events, the amount of net traffic does increase overall, but not hugely, as instead of wasting time reading/working, we all go and look at news sites instead.
One way around this problem is bandwidth insurance. What is this? Large groups of averagely popular websites all get their bandwidth from certain sources. When there's a sudden move in traffic, those really big providers can simply deallocate the bandwidth from gardening.com and reallocate it to the BBC .
I might be talking out of my ass here, as the BBC already has peering agreements with Telehouse etc it's so big. Alternatively ISPs could implement decent caching systems. Otherwise, FreeNet released 0.5rc1 earlier :)
A Few Ideas (Score:3, Informative)
Akamai had their work cut out for them that day, I can tell you. I was lucky. I called out sick.
But none of this really answers the question -- how do you cover your butt and insure that you keep getting a news feed when/if you need it? I noticed that when I go to www.php.com, it's quite slow. So I started using uk.php.net and it zips right along. The moral of this story is that you might want to find 3-5 news sites that you consider good (and a factor in this probably should be how fast news gets to their site), then find some printer-friendly version/low bandwidth links to their front pages. Those are far less likely to be used when things get crazy. Drop some admins an email, perhaps certain versions of their site is located on entirely seperate servers and might go unscathed during a 9/11-ish rerun.
Exactly which world do you live in??? (Score:3, Insightful)
the Internet is going to be the primary news source for many millions of people, particularly those without access to a quality television news service. How will / can it cope?
Huh?? I'm not sure what you're talking about but I'm pretty sure I don't recognize it. Quality television service is much more widespread than the Internet. I'm N. American, but I've lived for years in Africa and Asia. I can assure you that in "None of the above" has the web surpassed broadcast media as a source of news for any but an elite few. And the comment is irrelevant for the elite since they have access to "all of the above"-plus.
Seriously, even in the smallest, poorest villages around the world several people will have radios and access to VOA, BBC, a national broadcast network and one or two regional stations. In addition most villages will have at least one television.
The internet is a bit player if it's a player at all
Re:Exactly which world do you live in??? (Score:2)
Most programs are filler or infomercial. Take one hour of broadcast from CNN for example. Once you've removed all the ads, the logos, intros, thankyous, redundancies, credits, and teasers, you have about 6 minutes of content. A far cry from the days of Walter Cronkite.
As the big syndicates spread from the U.S. to Asia and Europe, any stations with relatively high quality are drown out or crushed. Content costs. Good content costs more.
AM, FM and shortwave are a different matter. If you can't access the web, then radio's where it's at. Most villages may have only one TV, but they'll have plenty of radios.
Excuse me? (Score:2)
You mean back when we had exactly 22 minutes of world news for the entire day?
You mean before the days of 24 hour news channels? And 24 hour Headline News channels?
You mean before the days of live congressional coverage via C-Span?
And are you aware that virtually every TV network went commercial-free during 9/11 coverage?
TV news deserves its criticism, for sure... but be fair. And don't pretend there was this golden age of news when reporters and newscasters worked for free because of an altruistic love of the truth. They've always been under pressure to make the news presentable, entertaining, to package it for consumption. If they don't we stop watching. But there are a HELL of a lot more TV news resources now than there were then.
Re:Exactly which world do you live in??? (Score:2)
(a) good web access, and
(b) no television.
Most companies don't give you paid vacation to go home and watch television during Major News Events.
Somebody has never held a real job....
Are Internet News Sites Ready? (Score:3, Funny)
I contacted them all and they said they're ready.
Isn't it already? (Score:2)
I, instead, got my news from "switchboard" type sites (/., drudge and a few forum sites), keeping an eye on who was up, mirroring important pages, and basically exchanging as much info as possible. It lagged a bit...I was 10 minutes out of the loop when the tower fell, for example...but I also wasn't supplied rumours like "there are nukes in the air" or "A fifth plane is on its way to chicago."
By the way, BBC had amazing realtime coverage plus rm video that stayed online pretty well. NYTimes was slow as hell. CNN got swamped, as did MSNBC.
In related news... (Score:3, Funny)
A spokesman for CNN.com said "after talking to several vendors including Sun, IBM and Microsoft, hotnakedteens.com won the business by showing they routinely handle traffic 10 times the traffic we received around Sept 11."
Initial notification only? (Score:2, Informative)
CNN and others provide email alerts for breaking news (which notified me of 911), the web then provides initial reports, then we switch the TV on and get realtime news as the web grinds to a halt.
Though if the next major event happens on the same day as a game demo or a new Matrix trailer are released, we're truly stuffed...
"Quality" television news service (Score:2)
So we have questions about bandwidth, okay -- but we also have questions about how and whether television and newspaper editorial process might break down in trying to get "instant" stories up on a Web site. A process set up to approve stories for tomorrow's paper doesn't necessarily apply to stories that need to go up now. (My two local dailies have really felt their way with that, too.)
particularly those without access to a quality television news service.
Okay, I'll bite... What quality television news service? Gotta get me some of that action. You must not be viewing the local sludge we get here, with the jocular anchors' repartee and all...
I've seen one U.S. "news" program -- Dateline, maybe? -- ask a scant few questions about the preparedness of New York's emergency Fire and Police responses, mentioning specifically the failure to improve the same communications gear that had failed in the earlier WTC attacks. The show mentioning those problems in passing, almost rhetorically -- "Some people wonder..." was the tone. (Apparently the TV network didn't wonder itself. Only some vague "critics" -- that's the tone I mean.) The New York Times published an article about those same problems, around a full year later if I remember right -- and the article's theme was "Why isn't anyone asking these questions?"
If we had quality "news" on TV, the shows would be investigating controversial events, not just... what, commemorating momentous ones? Journalism is about intelligent enquiry. If you had to choose between "intelligent enquiry" and "advocacy" in describing the Fox "News" Network, which would you choose? That network is about reinforcing people's political leanings, not reporting the news. No thanks.
Let me obliterate your argument (Score:2)
CNN HEADLINE NEWS, baby.
From the AP:
CNN Looks to Get Hip, Think Young
Wed Oct 2, 5:02 PM ET
NEW YORK (AP) - Is CNN Headline News down with it?
The cable network is trying, judging from an effort emanating from its executive suite to think young.
CNN Headline News general manager Rolando Santos told the San Francisco Chronicle this week that he's looking to mix 'the lingo of our people' -- words like 'whack' and 'ill' -- into newscasts to attract young people.
And the New York Daily News on Wednesday quoted from an e-mail sent by a network manager to his headline writers, sending them a copy of a slang dictionary so they can be 'as cutting edge' as possible.
'Please use this guide to help all you homeys and honeys add a new flava to your tickers and dekkos,' the message said, referring to graphics on the Headline News screen.
The list of phrases included 'fly,' meaning sexually attractive.
Santos said Thursday that the e-mail was designed to point out resources that might help headline writers.
'The e-mail was informational, not a policy or directive from me,' Santos said. 'With that said, I should point out that I want the language used in our tickers and dekkos to be real, current and relevant to the people who watch us.'
CNN underwent a makeover a year ago to add busy graphics to make its screen look like a computer screen. Its ratings have been improving among young viewers.
--------------------
Eh, maybe that wasn't such a great example. "Yo, that suicide bombing is wack!"
There is no such thing as quality TV news. (Score:5, Insightful)
But should a major world event take place in the coming months/years, the Internet is going to be the primary news source for many millions of people, particularly those without access to a quality television news service.
Please be advised that your set needs adjusting... It's pretty clear from the evidence (and from a phenomenological point of view if you observe your own reactions) that the experience of watching a major event on television as it unfolds barely qualifies as useful information, due in part to the nature of the medium, but largely due to the nature of media filters and techniques. When you see something like 9/11 going on, it's much closer to entertainment, unfortunately, than providing one with reconnaisance leading to rational behaviour. The drama of the moment helps you develop powerful emotions in relation to the event, but what kind of info do you really get?
When it comes to war, TV obscures. For instance, see this study on media and the gulf war. [umass.edu] [Remember that? Oh wait, it's still happening.] A salient quote:
In other words, you'd actually be better off combing through usenet than sucking on the immediacy of the glass teat.
Qualifier: I've worked in media-democracy-oriented film/video for years, I'm involved and devoted to the medium!
Failure of multicast (Score:3, Interesting)
CNN.com (Score:2, Informative)
"What if the president declares war this week?" (Score:2)
I atttended this presentation, so while the description above is first-hand, my memory of the details may well have dimmed with time.
It's the money, stupid (Score:2)
Are any of them even making a penny on their websites? So why pour more money into upgrades? What's the reward? So they can pay more for bandwidth and lose more money?
I was at work, away from a television on September 11th I heard vague news of a plane crash on the radio. I logged in for details:
msnbc.com - down
cnn.com - down
cbsnews.com - down
abcnews.com - down
drudgereport.com - down
I turned the radio back on. Yep. Still works.
Why? Because radio can charge enough for ad space to pay for a working transmitter and a studio and a full-time staff. Cable news makes enough money to support their operation as well.
But online news, for the most part, loses money, and thus can exist only as an offshoot from an offline operation like a TV news broadcast or a newspaper. Therefore it winds up acting only as 1) a supplement and a promotional tool for the broadcast or publication 2) a reader feedback time-waster.
It's always this way; follow the money and you get your answer. And right now the answer is none of the online operations have the desire or motivation to be "the" online news source when the next 9/11 breaks. Let the site go down. Who cares?
Streaming Media and Large Audiences (Score:4, Informative)
I've since built some even larger systems; I've no doubt that it's possible to scale Internet streaming media distribution to millions or even tens of millions of simultaneous viewers using today's technology and protocols.
ellbee
call slashdot. (Score:2)
Ha, I did the whole post about world events and didn't mention 9/11 once!. . . D'oh
No quality television news (Score:3, Funny)
Damn, all of us in the US are screwed!
That's the point. (Score:2, Insightful)
Do they have any obligation to serve under high load?
No. If you walk into my store, I have no obligation to sell to you. This becomes a matter of self-appointed corporate responsibility. When it really comes down to the wire, are you about providing the public with vital, up to date information, or are you about providing content to generate revenue? If many of the advertisers' links were slowing up (as was already posted somewhere above), you're not generating all that many more hits, and if they have to click the ad, forget it.
Do we even care? Maybe the radio is a better source of news sometimes, hell try CNN
Do you get cable at work? I don't. I don't have a radio either. This happened when most people were at work, getting ready for work, or on their way to work, most of them probably have internet access, but relatively few have access to cable. Radio is a possibility, but on average probably less ubiquitous in the work place than internet access.
Re:CNN Banner ads (Score:2)
Maran
Re:You overstate the internet (Score:2, Insightful)
But it is most people's main source of news _during the working day_. If an event happens during the evening people are most likely to tune to their TV. But if it happens during the day they are more likely to use the internet, simply because that's more convenient. And as you say, they want real time audio and video - from the internet if it's during the day.
There will always be bottlenecks, simply because it doesn't make economic sense to plan for such rare events. But as traffic in general grows on the internet, available bandwidth/server capacity will grow to meet the average demand (including pictures). This should make it easier for news sites to cope with peaks in demand by switching to low graphics formats.