(LinuxWorld) -- The Internet failed in at least two areas this week as the world reeled from the insanity acted out in New York and Washington. On Tuesday, CNN.com and other major news sites were virtually unreachable by many. Though the sites were still active, traffic was more than they could handle. CNN.com responded by putting up a simplified, low-graphics set of pages covering the attacks that required less bandwidth and server load.

A far worse failure came from sites created by volunteers where survivors could let friends and families know they were safe. Unfortunately, some people listed as "safe" on some of these sites were not, and others have yet to be discovered.

One part of the Internet that delivered is IRC, Internet Relay Chat. Special channels ("chat rooms" AOL-speak) dealing with the tragedy appeared minutes after they occurred. One such channel, #worldtradecenter, was set up on the Open Projects Network. The OPN is home to many open source projects, vendors, help channels, user groups, and in fact to #slashdot itself.

Although IRC is hardly a high-tech environment, it does provide a medium for quick and easy two-way communication among large groups of people. There was a very real need for people to be able to vent their feelings about the attacks. Sitting passively in front of a television set is not satisfying.

As the news of Tuesday's tragedy spread around the globe on Tuesday morning, one young man in Germany felt that a special channel was needed so that people could discuss it. Michael Römer, aged 20, set up #worldtradecenter for exactly that reason. He told me that he was in another channel on the OPN when the news broke, and he immediately felt the need to talk about it with others. Römer, known as "miro" in IRC, also told me that the reaction in Germany was very much the same as that of Americans: shock, disbelief, grief, and anger. Before Tuesday was over the channel would be crowded with as many as 700 people at once.

Being in the channel is very much like sitting in a room with people watching TV and listening to news sources from around the world. As a development breaks someplace else on the globe, it gets mentioned on the channel. I learned about Bush's speech on Wednesday on the channel hours before it was announced on CNN. On Thursday afternoon, CNN announced the arrests of suspected terrorists at JFK airport, and Fox News announced a similar event at La Guardia. Neither CNN nor Fox mentioned the report by the rival news service. On channel, we heard about them both as soon as they were broadcast.

Others have pitched in with Michael to help as "ops," those with the power to kick troublemakers out, answer questions, and provide reasonability tests for new information delivered in the channel. This week there have been eight to 10 ops present at #worldtradecenter.

One such op (known as "calc" in IRC) is Chris Cheney, a 24-year-old working his way through college in Huntsville, Texas. Cheney told me that he had been spending so much time in the channel that the ops asked him to join them. In his spare time, Cheney contributes code to the Debian project, the most popular non-commercial Linux distribution.

World perspective in real-time

Another is James Green (IRC nickname "jmkg"), age 23, an unemployed PHP Web developer from East Anglia, England. Like many on the channel, Green watches TV while online. He can watch the BBC, CNN International, Sky News, Bloomberg, and ITN on his PC. He joined the channel shortly after it opened and as it grew larger, he asked for more ops to keep up. The ops replied by asking him to become one. Green told me "the UK has seen a good deal of shock too. Various city financial companies dealt with British and American counterparts in the WTC building, thus the past day or two have been very sombre in the dealing rooms."

One channel op told me that he prefers to remain anonymous because of his ethnic background. He told me "I was born in Iran, I'm a US citizen and a patriot." But he did add "There are 'issues' that my friends, family, and I are worried about but for the most part this incident has brought me closer to people. I've been quite active on IRC, managing topics, confirming reports, etc. It endears me to people, I guess."

The makeup of the channel ops in terms of nationality reflects the nature of the Internet as a whole. This adds perspective to the comments that would otherwise be unavailable. The channel ops try hard to keep rumors separated from confirmed fact.

A second channel, #wtc-confirmed, has been created simply to announce breaking news, with no conversation provided. A Web site that is automatically updated every five minutes with the latest news posted on #wtc-confirmed has been set up as well. The URL is given below.

One thing I've learned more clearly in #worldtradecenter than anywhere else is that America does not stand alone in its shock, grief, and anger over the attacks. I had heard the quote on CNN, but to see it appear on the screen while chatting with "miro" Thursday allowed me to really understand it: "As Chancellor Schroeder said, 'We are all Americans.'"