The war in Iraq is testing the ability of many websites to cope with record numbers of visitors.
Net users eager for news of the conflict are turning to the web to keep up with the latest developments.
But the flood of visitors is proving too much for some the websites run by news organisations, government departments and branches of the military.
Firms that monitor the responsiveness of websites are already reporting that some are taking much longer than usual to appear.
Keynote Systems, which regularly tests the response times of busy websites, said the responsiveness of BBC News Online suffered during the busy lunchtime period with average download times rising from 0.47 seconds to 1.88 seconds.
ITV News went through a more serious slowdown with average download times ballooning from 5.66 seconds to 15.84 seconds.
As the conflict got under way, some sites such as that run by Arabic satellite TV broadcaster Al Jazeera were only intermittently available.
News source: BBC News
