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My School 'capacity' upgraded

One day after the Federal Government's controversial My School website launched — and soon after it crashed — the authority responsible released a statement saying that it had upgraded the "capacity" of the site.
Written by Ben Grubb, Contributor

One day after the Federal Government's controversial My School website launched, the authority responsible released a statement saying that it had upgraded the "capacity" of the site.

Julia Gillard

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard
(Credit: Australian Labor Party)

The organisation hosting the site, the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), said that the site had "over 9 million hits" on the first day. "This was significantly higher than expected," it said.

It had therefore "increased the capacity" of the site to handle the "very high level of interest".

"While no issues were reported overnight some users have reported difficulties this morning," the authority said. "These issues are being addressed."

Asked whether the "capacity" upgrade was in terms of people, server or software, the ACARA said it could not comment other than to say it was not people.

On 2UE's breakfast program yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said that high demand on the website had taken it down.

"It's demand and this website's got the capacity to take 1.7 million hits in 24 hours, that means it can take 2350 hits a second and even in the wee hours of the morning, because the website went up at 1am, there were some times that it appears that more people than 2350 a second were trying to jump on," she said.

"So it's really, it is huge demand. I mean web — this is, you know, backed up by nine servers and on and on the techie talk goes, but you know, 2350 hits a second, that's a lot of people all trying to have a look."

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