Have you ever thought about how current events might affect your bandwidth needs? I was reading an article on CNN’s website about the untimely death of Michael Jackson and the effects it had on Internet traffic. CNN claimed to have had a fivefold increase in traffic after Jackson’s passing. They reported 20 MILLION page views the HOUR the story broke. 20 million, in one hour. It made me think how an unforeseen news event could impact a business’ bandwidth needs.

Google, which has one of the largest infrastructures on the Internet, reported that news.google.com users were complaining that the service was unavailable for a length of time after Jackson’s death as well.  Google news was down; something that I didn’t even know was possible. Twitter also crashed.

What if your cousin is on the news and mentions your website? Do you have enough bandwidth to take advantage in a giant spike of your web traffic? Would you even know what to do? How quickly can you react to avert a problem?

Planning after the fact means you missed an opportunity, or worse, let your customers down. My point is: are you prepared for an unplanned event, good or bad?

Most customers that I speak with daily at VISI ask about how we plan for the worst case scenario. They rarely ask about the best case scenario. What happens to your business if there is a stampede to your server?

Will you be ready?