I can't imagine that anyone planning the
www.ellisislandrecords.org website
would have anticipated 50 million attempted hits in the first 6 hours the
site was online! (To put this number in perspective, there were almost 23
million immigrants who came through Ellis Island betw. 1892 and 1924, and
double that number in the website's first six hours! Genealogy must be
getting popular.)
Internet Week has an excellent tech article about the Ellis Island website.
It's at
http://www.internetweek.com/newslead01/lead042601.htm