| 2008 Olympics official site - another Chinese gold medal? |
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Press release
Levallois-Perret, 4 September 2008: ip-label, an impartial and independent institute of measurement of the perceived quality of digital services, took on measurement of the performance of the official site of the Olympics in an end-user environment, the way an internet surfer would perceive it whether connecting from various Chinese provinces or from large cities in some fifteen countries.
To maximize everyone’s enjoyment of the Olympic Games, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) set up an official internet site in Chinese and the two Olympic languages, French and English. Sohu, official partner of the BOCOG, was put in charge of creating, hosting, managing, real-time updating, and maintaining all three versions. A major challenge it was to implement such an information hub, which had to be user friendly and continuously accessible to everyone in any part of the world!
Similar performances across language versions
For several months, ip-label measured the English and Chinese versions of the Olympics website to obtain results not only from the period during which the Olympic Games took place, but from the preceding months as well.
Comparable perceived performance for internet users around the world... The graph below, however, shows the presence of significant disparities depending on the place from which the site was accessed. A Japanese viewer had to wait three times longer than a user in Shanghai for the complete homepage to be displayed.
Despite the site’s immense audience, it is nevertheless interesting to note that performances were fairly comparable: access time, between 10 and 13 seconds, was minimal considering the scale.
To avoid any bottlenecks that could be brought about by localized saturation of internet links, it was essential to prevent internet users from all connecting to the same host. To this end, the site was deployed to servers managed by Akamaï across the globe and directly connected to the main network operators. There was therefore no single official site of the Olympic Games boasting exceptional technical capacities, but a multitude of servers with less remarkable capacities.
This way, a viewer in New York did not physically connect to the same server as an Australian or a French web surfer. And even within a city, depending on the access provider used, the server was not necessarily the same.
When athletic performances impact the performance of the official website...
Access to the server and loading of the homepage alone are not all the user wants when seeking specific information on the site. To get to it, the viewer performs a number of actions.
Access and homepage loading performances were not greatly affected, but deterioration became more pronounced as the series of actions was carried out. The performances observed are very representative of internet users’ interest in and use of the service. Following a first peak in mid-July, a month before the competition began (which also likely corresponds to the period of finalization of travel plans to China), performances improved at the very end of July, until 8 August, the day of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. A week later, a slight improvement was observed, showing a passing disinterest on the part of users after the swimming events. Another peak started on 17 August, after the finals of the men’s 100-metre track race, which yielded the fastest times in the history of the event. Site performance improved spectacularly after 22 August, after the end of the most popular events, to reach the level observed in June.
What about Chinese internet users?
Access to the official site of the Olympics was also tested from several major cities in China, which made it possible to check the impact of international influx on local internet performance.
Until the end of June, performance progressed in a saw-tooth pattern, with a rather marked deterioration towards 29 June. Then in early July, performance improved considerably, stabilizing at a very low level until the end of the Olympiad. The explanation of this surprising trend lies in the fact that until the end of June, internet users the world over had been connecting to the same physical server based in China. At the beginning of July, the installation of the official site on different network operators in the leading countries of the world freed up Chinese servers for users in China, who were thus able to benefit from a very extensive infrastructure for their own use.
Few internet surfers were affected by slow access and loading of pages on any version of the official site.
By marshaling colossal technical resources, China won one of its wagers, displaying its technological virtuosity to the entire world. Finishing already in first place in the ranking of Olympic gold medals, China has definitely turned out to be the big winner of the XXIX Olympiad.
About ip-label
A neutral and independent institute, ip-label measures the perceived quality of digital services and applications worldwide: data (internet/intranet), VoIP/ToIP, television over IP and services for mobile terminals. ip-label is a trusted third party on which over 1500 direct and indirect customers rely (internet operators and access providers, public and private world-class companies, e-commerce, web hosting services, integrators, IT services and consultancy companies). For them, nearly 100 million measurements are carried out in 25 countries around the world. In addition to measurement, ip-label provides IT and business executives with consultancy expertise to accompany them in managing risks and reducing costs related to the performance of business applications on business and customer service delivered.
Founded in 2000, ip-label shows strong growth. International business accounts for 20% of its turnover.
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