The Internet was swamped yesterday morning as millions of people worldwide opted to view the eclipse online.
Many Internet users were left disappointed, as the volume of traffic left many websites inaccessible and connections jammed, meaning some of the promised views of the eclipse did not happen.
The Irish Times on the Web, which broadcast the eclipse live from an Irish Ferries ship in the path of totality off the north-west coast of France, experienced one of its busiest days. Technology Manager Dermot Hanley said there were "as many simultaneous visitors to the site as our bandwidth could cope with".
Accesses were still close to capacity at 6 p.m. yesterday, as visitors continued to watch archive video footage of the event.
In what is believed to be only the second Internet broadcast from a moving ship, the Dublin-based Internet Broadcast Company (IBC) filmed the eclipse from the Normandy ferry and relayed it via satellite for live broadcast on The Irish Times on the Web.
Because the boat was moving, the IBC had to manually track the up-link to the France Telecom satellite. "This would have been relatively easy if the boat was on a specific course," explained Kevin Quinn of the IBC, "but in the last five minutes before the total eclipse, the engines were stopped and we were floating at the mercy of the sea, so we had to continually track the satellite."
The technical challenges were overcome and the cloud cover over the ferry remained thin enough to make for a successful video broadcast.
The video files showing the eclipse, for which you will need RealPlayer software, are still available at The Irish Times on the Web's Eclipse `99 site: www.ireland.com/ special/eclipse/BBC Online reported that its eclipse coverage prompted the most intense usage to date of online video streaming on its site.