NBR's Online service was overwhelmed late yesterday in the wake of the Qantas mid-air emergency.Huge numbers of visitors swamped the site as the story unfolded. NBR's servers were disrupted twice late in the day and the cram of traffic also crippled speed
NBR’s Online service was overwhelmed late yesterday in the wake of the Qantas mid-air emergency.
Huge numbers of visitors swamped the site as the story unfolded. NBR’s servers were disrupted twice late in the day and the cram of traffic also crippled speed from its Last Call email alert service.
The Qantas jet shed large chunks of debris from one of its huge motors on a residential area at Batam, Indonesia, where locals reported an explosion and smoke trailing from the world’s biggest passenger airline model.
The aircraft turned back for Singapore after the explosion – which damaged parts of its wing structure – and jettisoned its fuel before making an emergency landing at Singapore Airport at about 11.45am local time.
NBR Head of Digital Chris Keall said the recently upgraded site had proved incapable of coping with the deluge of traffic. NBR Online was now exploring new options to ensure peak load problems would be overcome. At midday today, the site's server capacity was upgraded. Further enhancements will follow.
“We have been running very high traffic numbers for the last three weeks following NBR’s investigative reports on the Hubbard issues and a number of high interest areas but Thursday’s load was beyond anything we had prepared for,” he said.
“We are running a special interest, paywall business site and we’ve been completely rocked by the numbers we created.”
Mr Keall said NBR’s site had been signing up new pay subscribers at a rate of about 80-100 a week. The site’s unique visitor traffic had been maintained despite the introduction of the paywall in July last year.
NBR Online has more that 8000 paid subscribers, plus bulk subscription deals with the Auckland, Otago and Canterbury universities.
Organisations with multiple-user paid subscriptions include AMP Capital, AWS Legal, Bayleys, Bell Gully, BNZ, Chapman Tripp, Colenso BBDO, Colliers International, Ernst & Young, Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, Grant Thornton, HSBC, Institute of Chartered Accountants, Minter Ellison, NDA Engineering, NZ Post, NZTE, the Reserve Bank, Russell McVeagh and Westpac.
