QS oteret Wort deme 8, 1998,
ENABLING TECHNOLOGY FOR BUILDING THE NET
When Breaking the News
Imperils a Site’s Servers
Washingtonpost.com hastened upgrades
after a Beltway scandal rocked its servers
\Washingtonpast Newsweek Interactive CTO Steve Helbein (right) and site
technology manager Eric Schvinmer have seen traffic spikes of 65 Mbps.
cially with the TC
2.6 has helped us:
Schvimmer:
Lewinsky matter,
tions that Presiplateau than a spike. Asthe initial furor over middle of July, Schvimmer said, it will be ¢:
Since Heibein joined washingtonpost.com 1998. But one new section incorporating the
Thesite remains one of the most popular about a year ago, he has established a “40- revamped look was rushed into production
‘news outlets for business users on the Net. 60" policy, whereby once 40 percent of a re- Sooner: the Polite page. The sory broke on
According to Media Metrix, a Web site audi- source is used—whether bandwidth, — a’Thursday, and the new section debuted the
fence measurement service, washington- Servers, or other equipment_aktonal e- flowing Monday, Hens i
sustained peaks of 65 Mbpsin bandwith us- server may be deployed on the West Coast
staffers age (whereas the normal bandwidth utiliza- searle WFRASTRUCTURE
Servers, to running more servers that are in- +h page by using
dividually ess powerful. Currently, washing- fewer images. During the first few days of
tonpost.com runs on two Sun Enterprise _ the scandal, the site's 's home page appear-
000s and three Enterprise 450s. By the ance was redesigned to what Sheerness eret/kevnore
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