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By Kent Larsen
Demand for LDS-Compliled Data Swamps Ellis Island Site
NEW YORK, NEW YORK -- The 22 million record database compiled by 12,000 LDS
volunteers is in such demand that the website was all but unavailable its
first day. News reports claim that an estimated 10 million people tried to
access the site, located at
http://www.ellisislandrecords.org and by mid-day Wednesday, it was
serving a page with a message that read, "Due to unprecedented demand we are
limiting the number of users to our site. Please visit us again in a few
days." The demand was reminiscent of the launch of the LDS Church's
FamilySearch.org, which was also swamped on its first day, May 24, 1999.
After extensive publicity about the site and the opening of Ellis Island's
American Family Immigration History Center got the website and database
mentioned in thousands of US newspapers, radio stations and television news
reports, literally millions of people tried to access the data. One report
says that in the first four hours after the site went live Tuesday night it
recorded 50 million hits. And by Wednesday, only one in seven people was
getting to access the data."We certainly anticipated a big response, but we
didn't expect it to be this big," said Stephen Briganti, president of the
Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. "It has been extraordinary."
"They thought they were ready, but they weren't," said Kerri Driver,
spokeswoman for the center's web host, Hostcentric. "They're victims of
their own success. Clearly there's a huge among of interest. No one would
have imagined you'd have 10 million hits the first day." According to
Driver, the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation contracted with her
company for 10 servers to handle the database, but Driver says, "if you were
going to handle all of that, you'd have to have 40 servers." But Driver
admits that the interest won't be sustained and contracting for 40 servers
wouldn't be worth it.
A number of high-profile website launches have faced the same problem,
including the LDS Church's FamilySearch, which attracted hundreds of
millions of hits its first day. While the FamilySearch.org website, built by
Massachusetts-based LavaStorm, was prepared for a larger audience, it also
was swamped and had to limit access at first. Traffic has since settled down
to about 9.5 million hits a day.
Sources:
Ellis Island Web Site overwhelmed
MSNBC 18Apr01 I6
By Lisa Napoli
Ancestor hunt jams Ellis Island site
Chicago IL Sun-Times 19Apr01 I6
By Dave Newbart: Staff Reporter
Site's first day brings befuddled masses
Ft Lauderdale FL Sun-Sentinel 19Apr01 N6
By Jonathon King: Staff Writer
See also:
SETI@home, FamilySearch hit gridlock
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