[eccr] News-hungry surfers slow internet

News-hungry surfers slow internet
---------------------------------
News websites are having trouble dealing with the massive
increases in traffic caused by internet users' voracious
appetite for war coverage, following the attack by the
United States against Iraq, with many sites' responsiveness
slowing to a crawl and some sites not appearing at all for
large numbers of web surfers.  Traffic has tripled to the
BBC News website, with the average download time slowing
from 0.47 down to 1.88 seconds.  The site of famed Arabic
news network Al-Jazeera is only available in bursts.  The
news sites of Yahoo and MSNBC have seen comparable increases
in traffic, with traffic to the internet's top 15 news sites
increasing by 40 per cent on average.  In the wake of the
attacks of September 11, 2001 - when many sites shut down
completely - news companies developed strategies so that
they would not be caught out again, but, apart from the
major players like the BBC or CNN, most sites are still
struggling to keep up with demand.

Source: http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=15490 -
Europemedia.net

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