February 23, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY
REVIEW) -- When signals from the Mars lander "Spirit" began arriving
from across 35 million miles of interplanetary space, the images
encoded in the data went up almost immediately on the Net, giving
anyone with a high-bandwidth connection easy access to the data beamed
from across the solar system.
It's the kind of thing that sends
dedicated space enthusiasts into ecstasy. But the Mars rover mission
seems to be catching the attention of the public at large as well, with
traffic at the NASA site (marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov) blowing through any previous records for the space agency's Web site.
"We knew it would be of high interest but
in terms of traffic this is just right off the scale,' says Brian
Dunbar, NASA's Internet services manager, about the busy NASA Web site
that has been ground zero for coverage of the two Mars rovers, "Spirit"
and "Opportunity."
In fact, Dunbar reports that the site has
had an incredible four billion hits in the three weeks around the
landings, which is far more than the 2.8 billion hits the site received
over the whole of 2003. "Everyone publishes stats and I know they can
be slippery but I still can't help but believe it will be the biggest
event in the history of the Net," he says.
No wonder the public has been paying
attention. Unlike previous public space exploration events-often
limited to just a static TV image-the latest Mars rover missions come
with rich Web content attached. Of the 32 million people who have
visited the NASA site some 250,000 have downloaded a NASA application
that lets the surfer maneuver a simulated Spirit rover through a
virtual map derived from real data. There are also the raw hi-res
images, live streaming of press conferences and a broadcast of the
landings, which saw 48,000 people "tuning" into the site.
But while the public waits for the rovers
to transmit evidence of water on the red planet, there has been an
incredible effort going on behind the scenes to keep the data flowing.
Hosting an interplanetary event of this magnitude is no walk through
the park says Gordon Smith, vice president of marketing with Speedera
Networks Inc. (speedera.com), the company charged with making sure the network doesn't disintegrate under the load.
"The challenges have to do with the sheer
volume of traffic, much of which involves delivery of live streaming
flawlessly and immediately," says Smith. "There's a wide variety of
stuff, Web page requests, hi-res images and streaming. It is complex
and unforgiving task, especially the live streaming. Needless to say
there are a lot of people putting in a lot of hours."
At the height of the webcast of the
second landing, Smith says the company was streaming up to four
gigabytes per second, with stats showing average download time of less
than a second, a result perhaps not quite as technically impressive as
the rovers themselves but no small accomplishment either.
Speedera, of course, specializes in
providing one-off event hosting ability through a distributed network
of 1,300 servers in 20 countries that allows content to be served up
close to the surfer. "We're not a traditional hosting company. We have
a 'point of presence' on many different networks and run an overlay
network on the global network that provides a high amount of
redundancy," says Smith.
That model has allowed the company to
ramp up room on the network for a group of A-list clients such as the
launch of Microsoft's X-Box, Wimbledon and American Idol. "The client
would never be able to handle an event like this. The equivalent would
be building something like the national telephone system for their own
internal phone system," says Smith.
Speedera has had quick success since
setting out in April of 2000. It was a precipitous time to enter the
online world but the late start meant the company missed the bubble and
the resulting network overbuild (and accompanying debt), giving
Speedera a streamlined corporate identity that led to being named the
second fastest-growing private company in Silicon Valley in each of the
past three years by PricerwaterhouseCoopers. Most importantly, cash
flow turned positive in the fourth quarter of 2003, making the
successful hosting of the Mars landing an extra feather in the cap of
the company.
Smith, however, was quick to characterize
the landing as a victory for the industry at large, as it marks a new
milestone in terms of technical hosting ability. "Not just NASA, but
from the perspective of the industry as a whole, this is an enormous
event. It's only become possible to do something on this scale in the
last few years," he says.
But perhaps the biggest victory goes to
NASA, which is still operating under the dark cloud that descended on
the organization when the shuttle Columbia burned up on re-entry one
year ago. With the existence of the agency being called into question
by critics, connecting with the population at large was seen as a vital
task for the survival of the organization.
The all-out Web strategy, which has
allowed the organization to involve the public, marks a change in
tactics for the space agency. Up until last year the NASA homepage was
sitting on a single server in the basement of headquarters, ruling out
the possibility of a Web event like the Mars landings. At the time of
the Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997, when NASA registered just 48
million hits, NASA engineers had to cobble together a volunteer network
of reflector sites to handle those hits.
But that kind of quaint homespun approach
to Web hosting is likely no longer possible considering the expansion
in the size of the Web and the number of users since 1997. Consider
that between 3 am Saturday and 9:30 am Tuesday, the NASA site received
916 million hits and handed out 154 million Web pages for a total of 15
terabytes of information distributed to users. If one wonders what the
future of the Web events looks like, that's it.
Those involved with the project say
there's a higher calling here than simple terrestrial concerns.
Considering the rovers may answer the question of whether water existed
on Mars, helping us answer the question about possibility of life may
have existed there, the journey ultimately contributes to an answer
about the bigger question: Are we alone in the universe?
The magnitude of that question has imbued
those working on the project with a higher sense of purpose. As Smith
says, "It's something more than just hosting a lingerie fashion show."
In fact, some dedicated Web followers of the mission have become so
attached that they reported feeling slightly depressed when the rover
"Spirit" stopped sending signals because of a technical glitch a few
days after it landed. A bit of an extreme reaction perhaps, but Dunbar
says it was a heartwarming one. "It's been gratifying to see the
interest in this."
