Comments on: Debate: Can the Internet handle big breaking news?

CNET News' Tom Krazit and Declan McCullagh debate whether the tendency of Web sites to stagger under high demand can be avoided, or is even that big of a problem.

[c60chemist]

MJ was the greatest entertainer of the 20th century ? Are you kidding me? Have you ever heard of Elvis, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Madonna? What did MJ do for the past 20 years?

[Random_Walk]

To be fair, what did any of the others (aside from Mr. Crosby) do in the last 20 years of their lives?

Not discounting your argument (in fact I agree with your premise), but most of the examples you gave aren't exactly the strongest.

Regards,

[Tom Krazit]

Bing Crosby? Seriously?

[Random_Walk]

...you did say last _century_, no? :)

[airwolph]

Here's the funny thing, as great as those other artist were/are I would have to say with 110% certainty that they would not have generated the kind of worldwide noise that MJ's death generated. MJ spanned many cultures, age groups etc and had a must great vast array of fans than those you've listed.

To answer your question, not a great deal, but than again what has Madonna done the in the past 20yrs? One would argue that they're pretty much the same when it comes to that question.

[terminalblue]

I heard that he had to cancel several of his upcoming dates...
He cancel his date with Billy(age 11) and Joey (age 9).

[ikramerica--2008]

Yes, Bing Crosby. I'm younger than you, but I know my history. Bing was big, baby. He was a crossover, an entertainer as loved by men as much as women who swooned for him. His talent in singing (having 10 of the top 50 songs in 1 year alone), to his acting (Oscar for best Actor and 1 billion tickets sold for his films), puts most modern entertainers to shame.

We mock what we don't understand...

[bv90andy]

I think the assertion that "MJ was the greatest entertainer of the 20th century" can be pretty easy backed up by the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_and_achievements_of_Michael_Jackson

[pentest]

"Here's the funny thing, as great as those other artist were/are I would have to say with 110% certainty that they would not have generated the kind of worldwide noise that MJ's death generated."

Only because he is a sideshow freak.

What little talent he had evaporated before 1990.

[pentest]

"I think the assertion that "MJ was the greatest entertainer of the 20th century" can be pretty easy backed up by the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_and_achievements_of_Michael_Jackson"

Record sales and chart numbers(which are totally fabricated) are meaningless.

there are people that have more talent then this guy had on his best day, yet will stay unknown.

Anyone can sing what others wrote and follow choreography. There is nothing talented about MJ.

[g8crapachino]

@pentest, now your trying to deny actual Record sales and chart numbers? You must be one pathetically shallow and hateful individual. You're so deep in your own sense of inadequacy that you need to diminish someone much more famous and successful than you will ever be. You're just trolling for attention. Any loser can hide behind their computer screen and do what you're doing.

[jug831]

I think the bigger issue at hand is the fact that the demand was only 11% above normal and there were problems. What happens if 25% above normal?

[Random_Walk]

Something y'all perhaps missed as a factor:

When big news happens, word gets out. Even in MySpace game chat boards and numerous web forums, news reports were often being cut+pasted verbatim - often multiple times. I don't need to zero in on cnn.com, or faxnews.com, or CNET's site to read a big story - everyone else has pretty much passed it around by then, and I can read it from the comfort of my favorite blog/forum/chat-board/whatever. Yesterday's news spread a lot like a Linux distro did - it mirrored out organically, on its own.

Certainly there's a danger of getting bad info, but that's the same danger you find in television and even in print (though the latter is less likely to mess up since they have longer time buffers).

CNN was reporting that he was in a coma for the first hour or so. Fox was saying he was DOA (and got it right, mostly by guesser's luck IMHO).

By the six o'clock news, one was implicating prescription drug abuse, while another said he simply dropped dead, and a third said he had been sick since the day before for some odd reason, but they all more or less agreed on what the cause was, and that yes, he was in the current status of pushing daisies.

By the time the ten/eleven o'clock local news channels came on, the story had mostly gelled and was consistent across all channels, with few pertinent questions left unanswered (which would have to wait on the coroner anyway).

The morning paper? Well, they were able to get the story (mostly) straight, and even add some studied and (variable, but) carefully constructed insight into the mix.

Point is, The Internet, and even cable TV news, had happily out-stripped the flow of factual and accurate information, which in turn was disseminated widely with or without anyone seeing 404 errors in the process.

Even if televisions never existed, folks across the Internet knew within literally minutes that something was amiss, no matter how they originally got the information.The organic nature of the Internet allowed the information to spread rapidly in spite of server overloads, and in spite of (IMHO hyperbolic) claims that the Internet is overloaded and etc. I wouldn't be surprised at all if even the old USENET groups began getting the info and was cross-posting less than 10 minutes after it happened. In the world of spreading big news, that ain't half-bad.

Declan, you mentioned 'what if' on hurting the Internet. I daresay that it would be far easier to take out CNN and Fox News' broadcasting capabilities entirely and simultaneously, than it would to coordinate attacks on the MAEs and start slicing fiber lines all in one go. The centralized nature of television tends to leave a far more glaring nexus of 'what if' than anything on the Internet.

As for businesses trusting the public Internet to perform critical functions? Let me toss you both a monkey wrench: Only a damned fool would do it. Or, anyone doing so at least have enough redundancy built into said critical process, so that if Datacenter A became, say, a smoking meteor crater, Datacenter B would still be happily serving web pages. (see also related articles by the WSJ of their own backup and D/R plans, and how those kicked in (or didn't) shortly after 9/11 wiped out their main datacenter).

food for thought, anyway :)

[Pete Bardo]

Agree with c60chemist. What about Farah Fawcett? She wasn't accused molesting young children even once! How many times for MJ?

But that's not the point of this article. I'm afraid Declan might be right here. It's a matter of the right tool for the job. Those "companies (that) continue to build businesses around the idea of the Internet as a dominant source of information to the world" are seriously mistaken. The internet is only one channel of communication. Just because some other channels are older, that doesn't make them useless! If these businesses put all their eggs in the internet basket, they surely will fail in the long run.

[biffhenerson]

She wasn't accused of molesting, but the kids hung her poster on the wall and molested themselves millions of times.

[AretCarlsen]

The national IP network could quickly become capable of serving this level of data. All of the technologies are in place, particularly Multicast-IP (to conserve bandwidth when broadcasting to many recipients) and fountain codes (to recover from transmission errors without requiring bidirectional communication).

Television, however, has a legacy advantage in that massive spans of wireless bandwidth are legally dedicated to video broadcasting. If we handed those spectrum allocations to wireless service providers, it would accelerate the process of assimilating television into the internet. (We already made it digital anyway.)

It's like alternative power sources: When we need to switch, we will, but in the meantime, we'll take advantage of the preexisting infrastructure. That doesn't mean there's anything fundamentally wrong with the alternatives (solar / fusion / etc power, internet-based media delivery); they just didn't get grandfathered in (oil / television).

[ikramerica--2008]

true about the multi-casting. news websites should be able to flip a switch that, rather than offering instant access, "broadcasts" the page every 5 seconds (or 10 seconds), while streaming whatever video a la a TV channel. this would allow for unlimited connections without slow downs. You could "opt out" of this stream and go to the main page, where only a headline and a link would be provided for the major news item, but all other news would be accessible.

[biffhenerson]

The internet (network) is not the bottleneck, it is the web servers. Just because internet traffic was 11 percent above normal does not mean that it is reaching its capacity. The problem is the web servers that can not deal with the increase in traffic. I find it amusing that news outlets brag about their fantastic web sites. They run fine when they report that there is a kitty stuck up in a tree. But when there is real news to report, their website falls appart. Same thing on September 11th. When we need them most, they are unavailable. Not too impressive.

[bv90andy]

You are right, if a internet based company wants to hold on to its users, it should not let them down in times of crisis. Declan said that it might not be profitable to have a spare server (or several) for when a crisis hits. I disagree because when that crisis hits and a certain site proves itself worthy, then it gets free, instant advertisement. But when a site collapses and lets its users down, then those users might not come back to that site.

[txpcjunki]

omg...imagine when the internet will come to a screaming halt when Britney Spears croaks.

[Kemetic_Jedi]

That dude who made the first comment is ridiculous. Elvis stole a ton of his material from Little Richard and other Black entertainers

[ikramerica--2008]

So? Michael Jackson wrote none of his hits. He mostly sang Qunicy Jones' stuff. Some other song writers, too. Jackson, Elvis, etc. are ENTERTAINERS, not song writers or musicians. They did have influence over their performances, their look, and to some degree, the direction of their careers, but they were talented in performing and who they chose to provide them material, help choreograph their routines, etc.

[g8crapachino]

@ikramerica--2008. People need to check their fact. Michael Jackson did in fact write several of his own hits including such hits as Billie Jean and Beat it.

Yes it's true, he didn't write all his hits, but neither do any other entertainer. People don't enjoy a song because of who wrote it, they enjoy it because of who sang and performed it. Rod Temperton wrote the song Thriller but nobody goes around calling it Rod Temperton's Thriller. Rod Temperton's wasn't the one who sang the songs or danced the moonwalk. Likewise, nobody identifies the Elvis songs "Don't Be Cruel", "All Shook Up" or "Return to Sender" as Otis Blackwell's. It was never Otis Blackwell's voice causing girls in the 50's to swoon or his hips gyrating up on stage.

Songs are always associated to the performer who made it famous, not the writer. Those of you who are just splitting hairs trying to argue the true musical talent are just being petty.

[Akanhai]

you guys are wicked, i made a username just to tell you that. this helped me pass by day,
if you ever duke it out again ! post it!
both amazing points that are valid

[terminalblue]

Of course it can.

the internet handled the death of Jeff Golblum yesterday in fine fashion.

[Drily]

Declan, face it like a man, Tom out debated you.

[einstein1966]

Tom is way off base here. Every communication medium that requires a "stream" for each user, a connection for each user of some type, overloads when disaster happens. Cell phones, landlines, electricity, and the Internet ALL have issues when an unusual load is placed on them. You CAN design all these systems such that they will be able to handle use by the entire network simultaneously, but the cost would drive costs up tremendously.

TV is a stupid comparison. Because it doesn't matter if 1 or 1 billion people tune in....there is no "pipe" to each user. You can't design such a system for computer data because when someone connects, they expect to be able to watch / read / listen to whatever they want on demand. TV you have no control over what you are going to see when it comes on. They might be near the end of the story you need to know about, or they may not be covering it yet.

The 2 types of systems are opposites of each other. One can handle a nearly unlimited number of users, but doesn't give them any control over what they see (other than changing channels), the other gives complete control in that you can see whatever you want when you want from the beginning.

[Tom Krazit]

My point was more that the user experience of Internet-delivered news and entertainment needs to duplicate that of television for Web sites to be the primary destination for in a breaking news situation. We hear an awful lot about people who want to get all their news and entertainment over the Web, instead of over the television, but if stream-based networks are unable to handle times of crisis, people won't switch.

The issue could be mitigated at the wider network level, rather than having thousands of servers sit idle at every major Internet publishing company, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of incentive (yet) for telcos to do that.

Maybe the answer is that there needs to be something in the middle, something that gives more control over the consumption than television but is less demanding than the Internet?

[rythie]

The internet can (or will) handle this through multicast - which was invented years ago but is not currently enabled through most ISPs despite virtually all network equipment in the past few years supporting it. Nevertheless this will be the solution for live streaming of video content to lots of people.

Alternatively I think peer to peer networks could distribute the load of getting content out if needed.

It seems in most cases these websites should just offer a text only page that is cacheable when they can't otherwise handle the load - since this only seems to have happened about twice this decade (the other being September 11th). These sites could also be better prepared by having mirrors in quickly scalable cloud systems such as Amazon's S3/EC2 or slicehost etc.

[cnet_anonymous123]

The debate should have just stayed focused on how future technology can improve in handling breaking news.

Article became useless when the flow of logic went to comparing how a one-way flow of information (television) is compared to a 2-way (Internet). And even then it didn't even consider for load to a system like television broadcasting which would had to expand to cover a wider audience.

Let's just put this article and discussion away, CNET editors.

[marvin25]

In the case of Google they at the limit of their current bandwidth as have on you tube right now. This is not a good example right now. There is one ISP that is putting broadband as fast as possible and over running a lot of what the web site can handle. They are currently causing most web site to have trouble meeting the demand from this ISP. So you position is not right as most web sites can't handle the demand as I said from this one ISP who is putting broadband thru rural America. When you understand this then you can talk about demand. This is also why there are data centers going up to handle this demand. We are talking about the constant increase demand from this one ISP as it is putting broadband as fast as it get bandwidth at the major nodes. So the web site are in constant battle to get additional bandwidth as this ISP brings the web site down from demand. Go back to the drawing board.

I'm concerned about how the system have handled the traffic if the story broke four hours earlier. Much of Europe would have been awake and online. The surge would have been more intense.

[sanenazok]

Oh no so people had to wait for news. Even the argument of emergency broadcasting...it mostly doesn't matter. In a true emergency, like an earthquake or attack, what will the government know in the first few hours or even days? Nothin.

[ArsFragica]

The news on the Internet tethers on the brink of opinion than fact.

[SergeM256]

Internet has limited capacity and cannot handle peak volume. I remember, Internet was down on the morning of 9/11 - I could not reach any of news websites when it was happening but cable TV worked fine.

[pentest]

There is a lot of ignorance here. There is a big difference between the internet and individual sites. On 9/11 you could go to non-news website with no problem => not an internet issue.

[pentest]

How much of a problem was the increased load for the backbone routers? How much of it was simply too much traffic on a websites cluster of servers?

These are separate issues but yet you guys don't seem to understand the difference between bringing down the internet and bringing down Google.

[bvdon]

MJ most certainly was the greatest entertainer of the 20th century. It's not so much a measure of talent as it is distribution. Just how famous was MJ compared to the others? I think it is fairly safe to say that MJ is better known across the globe than all others mentioned.