News Web sites said on Monday they took steps to cope with increased demand after an American Airlines jet crashed in New York, having learned several lessons from a surge in traffic that disrupted many Web sites following the deadly Sept. 11 attacks.
Web site managers and analysts said the spike in traffic on Monday was not nearly as powerful or sustained as on Sept. 11 and the days following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Most noticeable slowdowns occurred at the New York Times Web site and at MSNBC.com.
The New York Times average times jumped from 2.5-3.5 seconds to 23.69 seconds, providing only 5.29 percent availability within the hour of the crash MSNBC's site also slowed significantly to 26.03 seconds and 63.46 percent availability within the hour of the crash. MSNBC addressed the problem by stripping its site of several advertisements and other features.
"A lot of news Web sites learned from Sept. 11," said Denise Garcia, analyst with research firm GartnerG2. She said several Web sites were storing articles about Monday's plane crash on other servers so that the additional traffic would not tax overall operations.
News source: Reuters
