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Why the Olympics Didn't Melt the Internet

Posted by kdawson on from the in-the-limelight dept.

perlow tips his blog entry over at ZDNet on why the Internet didn't melt when millions of users streamed 480i video for a week. The short answer is Limelight Networks of Tempe, Arizona. "[W]hy the Internet didn't 'melt' is quite simple — [Limelight is] completely 'off the cloud.' In other words, unlike Akamai and similar content caching providers, their system isn't deployed over the public Internet... Limelight has partnered with over 800 broadband Internet providers worldwide... so that the content is either co-located in the same facility as your ISP's main communications infrastructure, or it leases a dedicated Optical Carrier line so that it actually appears as part of your ISP's internal network. In most cases, you're never even leaving your Tier 1 provider to get the video."

5 of 383 comments (clear)

  1. actually... by pedramnavid · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    as far as the cbc goes, they don't: http://stats.cbc.ca/olympics_medals.asp?sort=gold

  2. Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video? by zegota · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Uh, it's ranked by most medals. The other sites are seemingly ranked by most golds.

  3. Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video? by mochan_s · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    It is always a good idea to praise your neighbor when that neighbor is low on oil and high on nuclear weapons while you are high on oil but low on nuclear weapons.

    Why? So, one neighbor can completely destroy the other neighbor 100 times over while the other neighbor can do it 1000 times over?

  4. Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video? by MadnessASAP · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I don't know about Canada invading USA but I can tell you that USA invading Canada would be a nightmare of guerrilla warfare beyond anything they ever had to handle in Iraq or Afghanistan. Think the Iraqis and Al-Queda had a fuck load of caves and holes to hide in? Well we have even more. The majority of us would be able to easily arm ourselves in the event of such an invasion, we're (more) intelligent and most of us have at least some experience with wilderness survival.

    That and we're the little nerdy kid in the schoolyard that everyone likes. It would be an unspinable foreign relations disaster to attack us.

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    I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
  5. Re:This is an old trick... by TheLink · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Patent? Anyone with a clue would have thought of this "on demand" within 5 seconds.

    I bet more than 90% of the patents are in the category of: "I need an omellete, what next? I've got it, I need to get some eggs! Wow, let's patent that step".

    At least that's what it was when I last checked on random patents.

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