The Perils of CDNs

So CERN have just held a popular webcast event to announce the latest results in the search for the Higgs. Many of the webcast viewers (no I don't have usage stats) were complaining that the stream was choppy. What I did notice on my laptop (couldn't get near the auditorium) was that the main libflashplayer traffic was inbound from 93.174.99.0/24 VELOCIX-EU - could this be the CDN used by Groovy Gecko?

Not having an onsite mirror though then meant that each member of staff watching was then pulling data *in* to site as the traffic graph shows:

I'm sure this can't be efficient... Ho Hum.

Another year of LHC Secrecy

So, another year of LHC running comes to a successful close, Once again we've managed to keep the real facts hidden from everyone - Not the Higgs (as thats's being discussed next week) but more importantlt that the whole of the LHC is actually a spinoff from one of the major Data Centre companies who had outgrown their shed. The Proof? why - of course...

however, best to keep it a secret - its easier to get runding for a mythical 27km tunnel than a shed :-) Oh, and a lot less sexy in the books too...