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HTTP: The Definitive Guide
book

HTTP: The Definitive Guide

by David Gourley, Brian Totty, Marjorie Sayer, Anshu Aggarwal, Sailu Reddy
September 2002
Intermediate to advanced
656 pages
22h 14m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from HTTP: The Definitive Guide

Flash Crowds

Caching is especially important to break up flash crowds. Flash crowds occur when a sudden event (such as breaking news, a bulk email announcement, or a celebrity event) causes many people to access a web document at nearly the same time (Figure 7-2). The resulting redundant traffic spike can cause a catastrophic collapse of networks and web servers.

Flash crowds can overload web servers

Figure 7-2. Flash crowds can overload web servers

When the “Starr Report” detailing Kenneth Starr’s investigation of U.S. President Clinton was released to the Internet on September 11, 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives web servers received over 3 million requests per hour, 50 times the average server load. One news web site, CNN.com, reported an average of over 50,000 requests every second to its servers.

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 1565925092Errata Page