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Slashdot'ed

Did you have trouble accessing Camera Hacker web site for a few hours yesterday? If so, that is because this web site was featured on the Slashdot front page. A fellow fan of the Hacking Digital Cameras (HDC) book had wrote a book review on Slashdot, causing massive traffic to the Camera Hacker web site.

Chieh Cheng
Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:54:30 -0800

Overall, the server handled the load just fine, with no more than 10% utilization. As seen in the previous Digg effect, the slow down was due to the bandwidth bottleneck, which only happens when loading the directory index pages (Hacks, Reviews, and Tips). You see, each directory index page contains over thirty article descriptions and links. Each article has a thumbnail image that is no bigger than a few Kilobytes in size. But when a ton of people all hit the index pages at once, the image loads can easily saturate the network bandwidth. Plus, with the tab feature of Firefox, it is not uncommon for our readers to load all three pages in the background at once.

When I temporarily disabled those thumbnail images, the server and network easily handled all the traffic that came from Slashdot. The Camera Hacker web site was successful at delivering content to audiences even during one of the most notorious web server nightmares--the Slashdot effect.

One thing I learned through this Slashdot experience is the existence of the The Coral Content Distribution Network. This distribution network can serve the contents of any web site in a distributed manner, from servers that reside all over the world. It's the coolest use for distributed computing I have seen to date. I am going to look for ways to seamlessly integrate this site with Corel for demanding times like during a Slashdot effect. Or, at least, provide links on high traffic pages. See example of how this site is served on Corel.

Upside of Being Slashdot'ed

Being Slashdot'ed is not all bad, especially considering that the traffic didn't cause the Camera Hacker web site a single scratch. One awesome plus is that we had more users browsing, socializing, answering and asking questions, and interacting on our forums. The page view count had more than doubled, beating the Digg effect that happened two weeks ago.

Chieh Cheng
Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:55:44 -0800

okay thats why it was so slow. that was brutal yesterday.

I added your page to my rss reader and it was so slow.

glad to see its all good now.

CadMasterAdam
Fri, 17 Feb 2006 08:56:11 -0800

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Related Links

• A cure for the 'Slashdot effect'
• Slashdot
• Slashdot effect
• Slashdot Front Page for February 15, 2006
• The Coral Content Distribution Network
• The Slashdot Effect

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