Cern's website saw a 1,066% increase in traffic last week, as
it
started its Big Bang atom collision experiments.
Last week,
the first beam in
the Large Hadron Collider at Cern was successfully steered
around the full 27 kilometres of the
world's most powerful particle accelerator.
Expecting a surge in internet traffic on the day, Cern asked
network provider Interoute to provide additional network
capacity.
On 10 September, the day the experiments started, usage of the
Cern website peaked from the usual 30Mbps to 350Mbps, an increase
of 1066% per cent.
Gareth Williams, Interoute CEO, said: "This historic event was
closely followed by people the world over. Cern not only had a boom
in network connectivity to power the event itself, but also a spike
in traffic at the Cern site in response to global demand for
real-time updates."
Last week, a site associated with the main
Cern website was hacked.