Subsequently, the company upgraded its distribution systems to bypass some of the Internet's many choke points. Capacity improved tenfold. Last May's Webcast was much smoother.
Difficulties remain even as computers get more powerful and more households get high-speed lines.
By now, Internet users are accustomed to jerky and flickering video images and music recordings that skip like a scratched vinyl record. It doesn't have to be that way. As the demand for sight and sound explodes, entire businesses, such as iBeam Broadcasting Corp. in Sunnyvale and Akamai Technologies Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., have formed around tweaking Internet performance. IBeam's production facilities in Silicon Valley look like a cross between a traditional broadcast studio and a network operating center. The blend reflects iBeam's goals of layering a broadcast-style network over an Internet built for other things.