The Wayback Machine is a 150 billion page web archive with a front end to serve it through the archive.org website.
Today the new machine came to life, so if you using the service, you are using a 20′ by 8′ by 8′ “machine” that sits in Santa Clara, courtesy of Sun Microcomputer. It serves about 500 queries per second from the approximately 4.5 Petabytes (4.5 million gigabytes) of archived web data. We think of the cluster of computers and the Modular Datacenter as a single machine because it acts like one and looks like one. If that is true, then it might be one of the largest current computers.
Also, we can do fun stats. We now know the the web weighs 26,500 pounds, the average web page weighs 80 micrograms, and 160 joules per query.
On another note, we got a nice letter from the last living director of the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, Gerard Baldwin, because he read about the “fantastic project”. Our Wayback Machine is a tribute to their more cleverly named “Waybac Machine” which in turn was a reference to the Univac. Sherman and Peabody live on.
-brewster
The success story video.
Very impressive! Although it makes me question if Sun can call it a microcomputer! I suppose they can get away with it since there are more parts per given area than in older machines, and even some modern machines. Although I must ask: If I have a server, and I have some resources just lying around unused on that server, could I donate some of those resources, although it would most likely be as a mirror? Although it might be more useful to allow normal computer users to simply use their existing browser cache to help you, if you could write an application for that. Feel free to send my suggestions where they are needed, or supply me with relevant information.