Emergency Messages

[dsockrider]

After speaking with a couple staff members here, there was mention that they couldn't access the UNL site for a period of time to view the UNL closing info concerning the snow days on Monday and Tuesday. I assume that is because many UNL employees and students were all trying to bring up the main splash page/news page at once.

It might be a good idea to have a function where all UNL sites have an area that can be altered centrally that displays emergency information. I'm just thinking if the UNL site can be brought down by too many people seeking information, that if every individual department could carry the same message, it could spread out the traffic to several sites instead of just one.

[rcrisler1]

The IS public webserver did get creamed. They just had its .conf file set to only allow a *very* finite number of connections.

The server itself was doing just fine ... CPU utilization, I'm told, was around 4 percent even at the peak.

The .conf settings, which were at Apache's default values, were changed to allow many more connections.

We've been working separately with Business and Finance on an emergency notification system that would closely mirror what you suggest, as long as we can do it without too much network overhead.

[dsockrider]

Is there any plan on how the website can be used in a crisis to inform viewers of emergency messages?

Concern # 1. I don't want our site to go down because a lot of people are trying to get information at the same time.

Concern #2 Is there any method that would be utilized to put an emergency message across all websites in the event of an emergency?

[rcrisler1]

That is being worked on now. We expect to have a system implemented in time for snow season.

Brett developed a strong backend. We have a Yahoo Widget and a Director-based app that monitor the feed ready for distribution; I want to find a way to get that functionality integrated into the templates, though, as we really can't assure decent coverage using apps that people have to install and make part of the set that opens when they launch their computer.

We're going to have a dedicated server to handle the messaging, and the messages themselves will be as light as possible.

Back to Concern #1: have you optimized your http.conf file?