NORAD readies the Net for Santa

A year ago, the North American Aerospace Defense Command brought its traditional Santa-tracking system onto the Internet -- and ran up against the mother of all Web traffic jams.

To keep that from happening this year, NORAD is using more firepower: an IBM system that should be able to handle more than 70 million daily hits for the holidays.

Christmas Eve is crunch time -- not only for Santa Claus, but also for the people who track him as he makes his global rounds. NORAD, the U.S.-Canadian military command that is responsible for the continent's air defense, has provided information on Santa's position as part of a 44-year-old tradition.

Phone jams vs. Net jams
For most of those years, NORAD relayed its radar and satellite readings over the telephone: Volunteers at the command's Colorado headquarters handled 17,000 calls last year and expect to take 25,000 this Christmas Eve.

But last year, for the first time, military officials tracked Santa's course on a special Web site as well.

NORAD and its private-sector partner in the venture -- Analytical Graphics, a company that makes satellite-tracking software -- expected that they might get as many as several hundred thousand requests for data. But the response outpaced their wildest expectations, so much so that the Web site was jammed up with the Internet equivalent of busy signals.

"The conservative estimate was around 10 million attempted hits on our site just on Christmas Eve. We had a million confirmed hits," said Maj. Jamie Robertson, a NORAD spokesman. That meant nine out of every 10 attempts to get to the site couldn't be put through.

Big Blue to the rescue
This time, NORAD has teamed up with IBM as well as Analytical Graphics to beef up its Web servers. Robertson said IBM is hosting the NORAD Santa site on the system used for the Nagano Olympics, with the capacity to accommodate more than 70 million hits a day and peak loads of 700,000 hits per minute.

"We're pretty confident with that kind of capacity that we shouldn't have any problems this year," Robertson said.

"However, I guess you should never say never."

He said the fortified Web site has recorded 5 million hits since its Dec. 2 debut and is currently running at a 400,000-hit-per-day level. But those figures are likely to rise sharply once NORAD begins its real-time course updates at 7 a.m. ET Dec. 24 (that's when Santa traditionally heads toward his first stops in the Pacific).

"We'll simply pick up the information as soon as the sleigh launches from the North Pole, heading for New Zealand," Robertson said. Even before Santa is picked up by radar or visual identification, NORAD will detect the infrared glare from the leading tip of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, he said.

"It's the same system we use to track missile launches," Robertson explained.

Santa speaks five languages
Server capacity isn't the only thing that's been beefed up: The site now boasts information in five languages -- English, French, Italian, Japanese and Spanish (Robertson says NORAD is receiving as many hits from Japan as from North America). Santa-trackers will be able to download audio and video files, as well as satellite imagery and cockpit views.

"It will pass the '9-year-old' test, shall we say?" Robertson said.

Although monitoring Santa's progress is far removed from NORAD's job of safeguarding North America's high frontier, Robertson emphasized that the holiday tradition made no dent in the military budget.

"There's practically no cost to the taxpayer for this," he said. "It's all volunteered."

NORAD is by no means the only Santa-tracker on the Web: NASA monitors the sleigh's progress using its J-Track system -- and also provides lighthearted updates on his RST (Reindeer Support Team), CDS (Cocoa Dispenser System) and other TLAs (three-letter acronyms).

There are plenty of commercial sites that offer real-time tracking and other online goodies, as well as downloadable 'Tracking Santa' shareware that will simulate the Jolly Old Elf's global journey on your desktop.

Tens of thousands of Internet users have downloaded 'Tracking Santa,' said Chris Edwards, the program's creator.

"It's a lot of fun. I'm not quitting my day job or anything. This is a just-me operation," said Edwards, who works as an engineer for a defense contractor and bills himself as 'Chief Elf' of Citius Development in Arlington, Texas.

"It's my 15 minutes of fame, I guess -- 15 minutes once a year," he joked.