I’m talking about an assault on the internet of Olympic proportions. Literally. The Olympics could possibly bring the internet infrastructure to its knees. Or not. Experts say 60% chance of no-problem, vs. 10% chance of total crisis. According to this discussion, the over 300 channels of live internet feed from the Beijing Olympic park might be a problem.

Do you remember when Victoria’s Secret did that one hour, one channel live web broadcast and the internet couldn’t keep up? This “amateur” competition will have up to 112 simultaneous broadcasts, at three different resolutions each to cover the range of events and languages. Then there are over 400,000,000 internet viewers between just the U.S. and China. Unlike cable, satellite, or over-the-air broadcasts, the internet essentially needs a channel per viewer.

So, this multi-billion dollar amateur event will be the biggest stress test of the internet ever proposed.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 9:49 am and is filed under American Culture, Communication, Current Events, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.