Today is the last day to file initial comments on the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality proposal, and the FCC's ancient technology is unable to handle the load.

This morning when trying to access the form to submit comments and the list of already submitted comments, I got an error message that said: "could not inspect JDBC autocommit mode." I also got this much longer and more entertaining error message:

The site did load for me a couple of times, but the problems don't appear to be a fluke. In other cases, I just received a blank page, and FCC watchers are reporting trouble too. Here's Tim Karr, senior director of strategy at consumer advocacy group Free Press:

The @FCC's comment engine appears to have crashed -- on the last of of "comments" for the #NetNeutrality proceeding no less. — TimKarr (@TimKarr) July 15, 2014

And lawyer and network neutrality supporter Marvin Ammori:

Last day for initial public comment on @TomWheelerFCC proposal to kill net neutrality. And the FCC servers are already down — Marvin Ammori (@ammori) July 15, 2014

The FCC has received about 670,000 comments on its net neutrality proposal, including those filed on the website and those sent to an e-mail address that also accepts comments into the official record (openinternet@fcc.gov), a commission spokesperson told Ars today. More than 440,000 have come via e-mail.

Unfortunately, the FCC is using an 18-year-old system to accept comments. "When the ECFS [Electronic Comment Filing System] was created in 1996, the Commission presumably didn’t imagine it would receive more than 100,000 electronic comments on a single telecommunications issue," FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray wrote in a blog post yesterday.

The site previously crashed after comedian and TV show host John Oliver called upon viewers to fight "cable company fuckery." In response, the FCC's IT squad "implemented an additional caching feature on June 3 to support some of the highest concurrent commenting levels that ECFS has seen in its 17-plus year history," Bray wrote.

Today, the system "is experiencing a heavy load, causing it to be slower than normal," the FCC spokesperson told Ars. "As a result, some comments may not be immediately searchable in the database. Our IT team is working to scale the load now."

Bray has written that the FCC is trying to modernize its IT systems, but it's obviously going to be a big project. The FCC has asked Congress for money to roll out technology upgrades. "The difficulty that the public is experiencing in submitting timely comments on this important matter is strong evidence, once again, that the Commission’s IT systems are badly in need of modernization," an FCC official said in a statement e-mailed to Ars. "The Commission has urged Congress to provide the Commission with the funds necessary to upgrade and modernize these systems, which is critically needed to prevent these types of backlogs and ensure user-friendly communications with the Commission on issues of importance."

This graph posted by Bray shows how the comment load has spiked at certain times:

The comments coming in via e-mail are also substantial:

While the deadline to submit initial comments is at midnight tonight, the FCC will accept a round of reply comments until Sept. 10.

The FCC's proposal (full text) would prevent Internet service providers from blocking third-party Internet services and require them to provide a minimum level of service to consumers and companies trying to offer services to them. However, it would not outlaw "fast lanes" in which Internet service providers can charge companies to accelerate traffic over the network's last mile.

Consumer advocacy groups and some tech companies have called upon the FCC to implement stronger rules that ban such fast lanes, while Internet service providers and groups representing them want weaker rules or none at all. There have also been dueling proposals from members of Congress on opposing sides of the debate.

UPDATE: The FCC has extended the comment deadline until Friday.