In some ways, the online world is just like the off-line world: when automotive traffic increases in a neighborhood or town, the likelihood of crashes becomes greater. Internet experts are discovering that the Web works almost exactly the same way. As Web traffic increases, server errors and crashes become more commonplace, even affecting the biggest and most robust web sites online.
Even online Behemoths such as Google occasionally experienced downtime or “crashes.” Recently, online retail giant Amazon.com was knocked off-line for several hours a day over a period of three days, costing the company millions of dollars in lost sales. And researchers say these types of Web disruptions are becoming more frequent as online traffic grows.
The New York Times is reporting that pillars of the online community, such as Yahoo.com, Amazon.com and others have seen an increase in technical problems in 2008, causing users to find “404 error” pages when attempting to access the sites. Some experts predict the problem will get worse before it gets better.
One Internet engineer from San Francisco is attempting to capitalize on the increasing instability online by creating a web site designed to confirm whether a site is actually off-line, or is only unavailable because of a problem with your specific Web browser or operating system. Alex Payne is the brains behind downforeveryoneorjustme.com, an increasingly popular web site that allows users to check the official status of any web domain to find if it is completely off-line, or simply inaccessible from your location at this time.
Because the Internet has been touted as a “place” that never sleeps, where web sites and services are available 24/7, users are often disappointed in to find out that their favorite sites can suffer downtime, and occasionally be off-line for hours on end. Popular sites such as MySpace, Twitter and Facebook experience periodic “crashes” or server downtime that users can find frustrating.
Sites like downforeveryoneorjustme.com can help reduce the stress of the situation by letting Web surfers know if their favorite site is actually down, or if the problem lies in their own computer, Web browser or operating system.
Mr. Payne reports that an unusually high number of visitors to his site inquired about Amazon.com a few weeks ago. Amazon, which has one of the most robust servers available, is usually a pillar of stability and consistency on line. The fact that many users received only an error message while trying to access the normally impervious site caused them to doubt their own computers, or even suspect a virus or other malware.
Basically, many people just did not want to believe that Amazon.com could be knocked off-line — but it does happen, and according to experts it is becoming more frequent these days for even the biggest players online to experienced downtime, or even all-out “crashes.”
