If you own a web site, especially one that features audio or video, and you receive any measurable amount of traffic, sooner or later you’re going to hear a viewer complaint.
Something on the site won’t load. A video won’t play. Something is slow. And the complaints will always be a bit personal in nature, as in YOUR video won’t play or something on YOUR site is slow. Almost as if there’s a lightswitch for your site that you foolishly forgot to throw.
Of course the truth is that you have almost no control over any intermittent problems that may appear on your site. In fact, the problem may not even be with your site at all. Most people don’t realize that their computer is not taking a direct path to your web site. Rather, they are probably jumping through 10 or 15 different geographic hubs to get to your site…and if any of those hubs have issues…well, the user is going to experience issues too.
Moreover, if you ask the average person how the Internet works, you won’t get an answer. It seems the common belief is that the Internet magically travels through the air or that there’s some wizard in a castle controlling everything.
Well, there is no wizard. And only about 10% of the Internet is wireless. The rest is run by cable. Hundreds of thousands of miles worth…including over 500,000 miles floating on the bottom of the world’s oceans.
Popular Science did an article recently detailing not only how the Internet is actually wired…but how prone to failure it actually is. For example, in January and February of last year, as much as 80% of the Middle East temporarily lost the Internet when undersea cables were accidentally cut by boat anchors.
And cable failure like this is actually a daily occurrence. There are companies whose sole job is to pull up cables from the ocean floor (that have been severed by boat anchor or fishing nets) and fix those cables.
In fact, after reading the Popular Science article, you’ll be surprised that the Internet (and your web site) run as smoothly as they do.
To read the article now, just click here. You will be enlightened as to how the Internet actually works.