Virtual kick off for Euro 2000

The official EURO 2000 website has been launched with predictions that it will become the world's most popular web site.

The site is expected to have 150 million 'hits' a day, according to PSINet, Official Internet Solutions Partner for EURO 2000. This would eclipse previous football tournaments with France 98 getting an average of 70 million hits a day and EURO 96 getting less than one million.

PSINet will provide connectivity, hosting and security facilities before and during the competition. The EURO 2000 web site will be hosted in 10 locations, spanning 9 countries worldwide. Traffic will be load balanced so that each user will go to the closest and fastest location.

PSINet is also providing a high bandwidth, state-of-the-art worldwide network for the hosting of the web site and operates a global Internet-optimised network, featuring layered switching technology to provide a quality of service that no "router only" ISP can provide. The company has more than one million miles of fibre optic cable operating at speeds up to 9Gbps (9 billion bits per second), 'making its infrastructure among the largest, most capable communications systems on earth'.