Defense Department Webmasters were caught off guard last month by a dramatic spike in Web traffic, which overwhelmed some Web servers and raised questions about the role of DOD sites as news sources.

In the last two weeks of March, the interest in DOD Web sites exploded, reaching levels Pentagon Webmasters had rarely seen before. Some increase in traffic was expected, but Terry Davis, manager of the Defense secretary's public Web program, said that in the first few days of the war, traffic across federal servers increased by as much as five or six times normal patterns.

"We have seen a jump in government Web sites that normally don't receive that much traffic," said Abha Bhagat, senior Internet analyst with Nielsen//NetRatings. "People just didn't have a reason to visit the Defense Department sites before. But now, perhaps they are going to get the government's viewpoint or perspective."

Visitors discovered DOD sites specifically focusing on the war on terrorism, such as www.defendamerica.mil, which has seen a six-fold increase in traffic, Davis said.

Some specific news events, such as the test detonation of the Massive Ordnance Air Blast in Florida March 11, were of particular interest to the general public. Users requested the video file of the detonation nearly 4 million times.

"That is undoubtedly the biggest single spike that we've ever had," Davis said.

Shortly after that spike, DOD began using edge distribution services, which enable DOD to copy and store Web pages in geographically dispersed servers. When a user selects a page to view, the Web server pulls up pages from the server closest to the user, spreading out the traffic burden. DOD has hired Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai Technologies Inc. for those services.

"This service greatly increases the efficiency and reliability of getting our pages out to the world," Davis said. "Although we had what we believed to be acceptable surge capacity in our normal bandwidth posture, we did not predict the unprecedented high level of Web use that has been reflected throughout the Web during this phase of the war on terrorism and the disarmament of Iraq."