A Look Inside the BBC's Network

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!"

Comments

Wow

[Neil Blender]

A news organization servering up news to the entire world over the internet has a powerful backend. I mean, who would have guessed?

BCC vs CNN

[commo1]

I hope the firewalls can withstand the US Government's news censorship attacks.....

I has good grammar too

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC have provided

What is you saying?

Re:All this seems to running some form of *NIX

[Anonymous Coward]

As a license payer I disagree with their choice of Sun. For what they're probably paying they better have a DAMN good support service.

AWESOMED FP

[Anonymous Coward]

guest and never get 8ay be hurting

the BBC's blatant anti-American bias

[Anonymous Coward]

We all suspect that the BBC carries a heavy anti-American bias, and nowhere has this become more apparent than in the BBC coverage of the tsumnami disaster. The following excerpt from the Telegraph gives the scoop:

'Don't Mention the Navy' is the BBC's Line

Last week we were subjected to one of the most extraordinary examples of one-sided news management of modern times, as most of our media, led by the BBC, studiously ignored what was by far the most effective and dramatic response to Asia's tsunami disaster. A mighty task force of more than 20 US Navy ships, led by a vast nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, and equipped with nearly 90 helicopters, landing craft and hovercraft, were carrying out a round-the-clock relief operation, providing food, water and medical supplies to hundreds of thousands of survivors.

The BBC went out of its way not to report this. Only when one BBC reporter, Ben Brown, hitched a lift from one of the Abraham Lincoln's Sea Hawk helicopters to report from the Sumatran coast was there the faintest hint of the part that the Americans, aided by the Australian navy, were playing.

Instead the BBC's coverage was dominated by the self-important vapourings of a stream of politicians, led by the UN's Kofi Annan; the EU's "three-minute silence"; the public's amazing response to fund-raising appeals; and a Unicef-inspired scare story about orphaned children being targeted by sex traffickers. The overall effect was to turn the whole drama into a heart-tugging soap opera.

The real story of the week should thus have been the startling contrast between the impotence of the international organisations, the UN and the EU, and the remarkable efficiency of the US and Australian military on the ground. Here and there, news organisations have tried to report this, such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine in Germany, and even the China News Agency, not to mention various weblogs, such as the wonderfully outspoken Diplomad, run undercover by members of the US State Department, and our own www.eureferendum.blogspot.com. But when even Communist China's news agency tells us more about what is really going on than the BBC, we see just how strange the world has become.

One real lesson of this disaster, as of others before, is that all the international aid in the world is worthless unless one has the hardware and organisational know-how to deliver it. That is what the US and Australia have been showing, as the UN and the EU are powerless to do. But because, to the BBC, it is a case of "UN and EU good, US and military bad", the story is suppressed. The BBC's performance has become a national scandal.

BBC funding through tax money.

[Anonymous Coward]

' Nope, the BBC is funded entirely through the license fee, which you have to pay if you own a TV. " '

It is always accurate to call a forced payment to the government a "tax".

' Nor is it controlled by a government board. The day to day running is controlled by the Director general '

Then you go on to describe exactly how this board is controlled by the government! Sorry, isn't a board controlled by the government = "government board" ?

' The only other contact that the government has with it is the Royal charter '

Which is more detail about how it is a division of the government.

' but the government doesn't actually control them at any direct level. '

Yet, you detailed this control earlier.

BBC not independent of government at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the BBC is a part of the government, it cannot logically be independent of it. It can be independent of other divisions of government, but not from government itself.

' The BBC has a charter to say what it can and can't do '

This charter is written up and enforced by.... guess what? the government.

Re:BBC not independent of government at all.

[eno2001]

You're a fucking asshole. God I wish I could afford to leave this shithole of a country. I'm surrounded by 51% moronic monkeys who like to flip levers the wrong way in the voting booth.

Re:BBC not independent of government at all.

[Boronx]

He has a point, though. If Bush were PM instead of president, his first act would have been to revoke the BBC charter and put his own henchmen in charge of it.

And his party would have gone along with it like lemmings.