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4. The Internet Reality
In this early phase we only realised WWW as the most essential service and beside a regular data backup
almost no quality of service guarantees were given. By October 1, 1994 DW was on the Web! The service was
announced on different national and international mailing lists and Web indexes. In addition DW started
advertisement in its radio and TV programs.
For a fast and less-expensive solution for an early start of the service we used the second-level domain name
'gmd.de' for DW's Internet service names. The machine was directly connected to our local network and DW
staff was able to connect via modem to the server machine.
But already three weeks after going on-line all planning was passed by reality. DW's on-line information at the
evening of the ´94 election of the German parliament (Bundestagswahl 1994) was an overwhelming success:
35,000 accesses at that day and another 30,000 during the next week exceeded the most audacious expectations
by far. The service machine already got to its limits. So following our contract we had to talk to each other
again.
4.1. Services Needed
People at DW were very impressed and motivated by the results of the early phase, especially by the events
around the Bundestagswahl. DW decided to finish the introduction phase immediately and to continue with a
regular production phase. It was our task now to map the additional requirements to feasibility with respect to
hard- and software as well as bandwidth limitations and costs. At first they had wanted to be present in
Internet at all, now they wanted more. Finally we agreed upon the essential services
- WWW,
- FTP,
- WAIS and
- email.
Beside on-line browsing within the Web, FTP was needed to give the users the ability to download large files
like e.g. DW's monthly program schedule. For large Web sites like DW an index is necessary to be able to
search for information. We decided to use WAIS as the standard indexing service within the Internet. But DW
didn't solely want to provide information, they were also interested in direct user feedback. Thus email was
also needed. Also these services had to be integrated in an efficient and useful manner.
4.2. Quality of Service
For the production phase effective quality of service guarantees were clearly needed. We agreed upon the
guarantees and upper limits for the
- operation of the services (24 hours a day, 7 days a week),
- reaction upon any failures,
- backup of the data,
- system resources, and
- connection bandwidth.
In addition we agreed upon monthly usage statistics for DW and quarterly management reports of the current
status and the ongoing developments.
An effective mechanism for announcing any kind of failure and the persecution of its processing and eventual
elimination became necessary. Our solution relies on email and mailing lists. Different roles like e.g. ftpmaster
or webmaster are defined and related to respective mailing lists. Internally we clearly defined the
responsibilities of the involved system administrators (machine, network, services) for reactions upon
announcements.
In addition, in order to guarantee the quality and to talk about all existing or arising problems we (GMD, DW
and gekko) meet on a regular basis. At the beginning of the co-operation we meet more frequently to fix all the
details and to give people at Deutsche Welle the necessary Internet background. Later on the intervals between
the meetings became longer.