Forwarded From: William Knowles <erehwon@kizmiaz.dis.org>
[Does anyone know what platform M$ is using to serve WebTV?
in light of M$ having to use Solaris to serve their Hotmail
customers, Another possible embarrassment for Gates?
-William Knowles]
[News.com] (7.2.98)For the second time in seven days, users
of WebTV's Internet access devices found their on-ramp online
was down.
According to WebTV executives, the outage started yesterday at
around 3:30 p.m. PT and lasted until 5:30 p.m., when the company
powered down its network to bring new server computers online to
handle recent increases in customer usage. The servers are powerful
computers that handle the flow of information from the Internet to
devices such as WebTV's set-top box.
Microsoft, which purchased WebTV last year for $425 million
in an effort to expand its reach into the consumer electronics
market, said a two-hour outage last week took place when a server
was brought down for unscheduled maintenance. In both cases,
company representatives say users had problems logging on to the
service both before and after the outages, as network capacity
reached its limits.
WebTV said an unexpectedly large number of new users have
swamped the system. "Recently, we've had a flood of people
coming in. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough server
capacity for yesterday," said an apologetic Steve Perlman,
president of WebTV Networks.
Normally, WebTV expects to experience the most growth in the
fall and Christmas months, he added, and server installations
are planned accordingly to handle the additional load.
Unseasonably strong sales have forced the company to add
new capacity to the service.
According to Perlman, the service now has 400,000 users.
Analysts' most recent estimates had counted some 350,000
customers, and previously the company counted some 250,000
during last year's Christmas selling season. The executive
attributed the growth spurt to finally having enough units
available in retail stores from manufacturers Sony, Philips,
and Mitsubishi.
"We're trying to best we can, and it hurts us a lot when the
service doesn't run perfectly. It's gotten to the point where
it really matters when service goes down," Perlman noted.
Such problems aren't new for the fledgling consumer service.
WebTV experienced similar problems in December, again due to
unexpectedly strong sales.
Because WebTV has not been in business very long, the
company has had trouble forecasting service demand.
While such difficulties apparently are not turning off
new users yet, consumers expect home electronics being
more reliable than computers. Any disenchantment with the
emerging array of information appliances could limit their
appeal to the mass market.
-o-
Subscribe: mail majordomo@sekurity.org with "subscribe isn".
Today's ISN Sponsor: Repent Security Incorporated [www.repsec.com]
Received on Mon Jul 6 08:16:44 1998