Internet impact of Apple Tiger

Fri Apr 29 14:47:02 UTC 2005

> What if more than a million Tiger Safaris were on the loose. Oh boy! 
While
> an addition 48 gigabytes of traffic a day or 1.4 terabyte a month is not
> that much for large sites, but it will add up.

An we were all worried about the impact of Internet TV...  ;-)

> How about randomizing the whole RSS polling process? Instead of pulling 
down
> RSS feeds every hour, let the feeds download randomly. Okay that will 
help
> distribute the loads on the servers more evenly, but that still doesn¹t
> resolve the issue of inefficient use of network resources, especially 
for
> those who pay for those kind of things. Suggestions?

How about synchronising all RSS feeds using NTP-synchronized clocks so
that every RSS client in the world polls for updates at exactly and
precisely the same instant, every 5 minutes. Sound crazy?

Let me introduce you to a little-known technology known as IP multicast.
Think about it...
;-)

--Michael Dillon
P.S. My company happens to carry large amounts of RSS-like data 
using IP-multicast. You may have heard of this RSS-like system
invented back in the 1870's under the name of "ticker tape".
Nowadays NYSE, NASDAQ and other markets still distribute tick
data but it is done using multicast. Everything old is new again.