In article <200907041222.naa23...@sunf10.rd.bbc.co.uk>, Brandon
Butterworth <bran...@rd.bbc.co.uk> writes
Paying a lot more to host the website with higher "burst" capacity
during an emergency, isn't an option.
The only other idea I've had is to sign all the customers up to receive
an SMS via some sort of broadcast service (the news will fit easily in
one SMS).
If the event is suitably calamitous we will do that for you -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/5194672.stm
The "event" (typically closing a High School because of snow, but we
have swine flu these days too) is currently reported mainly by local
radio stations. However it doesn't scale - there are perhaps two hundred
of them trying to phone in to one radio station during the same 15
minutes after they made the decision, half an hour before the school is
supposed to open for the day.
Another problem with a literally "broadcast" system is that it takes
them too long to read out the names of the schools which are closed,
even if trying to cover just one county.
Nor does it matter to anyone except a particular closed group of perhaps
1000 households whether any one school is closed - so telling everyone
is a bit of a waste.
So it seemed to me that a Tweet from the school would be an ideal
solution.
But a system like yours, if it could be divided up into a few tens of
thousands of SIGs (one for each school), is the kind of "more
traditional" solution I was thinking about.
--
Roland Perry
