The Apple.com Web site went down today, following the keynote by new CEO Tim Cook.

The site could not be reached for about 20 minutes. It went back up around 12:20. The question – what happened?

Apple is not talking but it appears the sit went down as people rushed to the site following the keynote. There were some reports of a hack but those appear to be unfounded.

Apple had a limited failure to the App store earlier this year, following the news of its much anticipated Mac OS X Lion release.  Many users were greeted with, “This action cannot be completed at this time.”

Services Angle

Why big sites go down is often attributed to the architecture of the site and the strength of the content delivery network. Apple works with Akamai Technologies, a to handle simultaneous massive transfers. Akamai uses DNS and data replication to optimize downloads.

It’s just something to consider in this data age. The need for distributed networks will only increase as more service providers enter the market. It’s the capability to create smart data distribution which can prevent these kinds of problems from happening.