Not necessarily a major Internet event, but it appears superbowl releated web sites did well this year. According to Keynote's press release http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000202/ca_keynote_1.html only one superbowl advertisor web site out of 35 was inaccessible during the superbowl.

I didn't notice any significant correlation between the network provider and the performance of the web site.

Are folks getting better at predicting advertising generated traffic? Or are people just massively over-provising their web sites, and praying?

The following is off the record and I cannot divulge the client's name. Hoever, FYI... I was managing the applications team for one of these sites. We had little warning of the ad (found out about it via some of the press descriptions of e-commerce sites and the superbowl rather than from the client). As far as I know nobody had a real marketing prediction at traffic increase due to the ad. Site was designed with some margins for peak traffic early next year and has been running at predicted this year traffic in general, about 1/3 of design capacity. We saw a blip, but only a small one, during game time. It looks like people who were watching the game were watching the game, not geeking. Since nobody had something of the nature which would grab typical football fan's attention (Victoria's Secret ad) this time around, it looks like the direct impact was low. -george william herbert gherbert@crl.com