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A Look Inside the BBC's Network

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the bits-bytes-and-accents dept.

the-dark-kangaroo writes "The BBC have provided the entire internet with a look inside their amazing network. It shows everyone the almighty web power they are with over 40 webservers and 12 firewalls and their 8Gbps intersite connections. All this seems to running some form of *NIX with perl underlying their powerful website delivery. Take a look at those load graphs!"

4 of 328 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdotted? by Mike+Rubits · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Geez, having an awful time getting access to the graphs and all that fun data. So much for that 8gbps then huh?

  2. Most impressive? by mreed911 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The BBC seems to understand the /. effect, so they've got a low-res, low-graphics, low-intensity page up to handle the load.

    The overview diagram points to a directory, so it can be virtually hosted anywhere, further distributing the load.

    Maybe they'd be kind enough to measure the /. effect and post a separate graph showing traffic with referrals from slashdot? Now that would be neato...

    Cheers, guys! Steady on!

  3. Completely different inside by isorox · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The network infrastructure throughout the BBC, certainly in News, is so microsoft centric it's unheard of. The network has recently been sold, along with the staff, to Siemens. It's based around Active Directory, all file servers are Windows, all DNS and DHCP is maintined by windows, with only a smattering of *nix boxes (DHCP at one london office, unix for parts of the BBC-Wide Imaging system "elvis" and "Jupiter"). The desktop is 2K/XP, and so locked down we cant even run the BBC News Ticker on it! (For what it's worth, everyone in my office ignores such policies as we need things like Putty and VNC to work)

  4. Re:All this seems to running some form of *NIX by jd · · Score: 4, Interesting
    They have eight servers, and they're all running SunOS? And anybody takes that seriously? If they're running Sun hardware at all, they'll be using Solaris. Further, while they're likely running Apache, they're a "high profile target", making it likely they're running a very recent version.


    BBC technical guys are wizards, on this kind of stuff. In the 1960s, an engineer by the name of Delia Derbyshire could get sound generators to do stuff even the designers had no idea they were capable of. The BBC's tech division has always been horribly underfunded, but if they had a decent budget, a lot of R&D companies would be wise to fear them.


    (Their "open source" video codec and codec distribution system are two examples of what they can do in their free time.)

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)