Scalable Internet Architectures

Defining Scalability

What does it mean to scale? Essentially, it means how well a particular solution fits a problem as the scope of that problem increases. One of the original approaches to this book was to present a few illustrative case studies demonstrating epic and catastrophic business-collapsing mistakes. The dot-com bubble popping provides ample material for such horror stories. Instead, specific common problems will be presented, as well as progressive solutions that scale well. It is hoped that this approach to refining the solutions will provide insight into sound approaches to solving difficult (and easy) problems and result in improved architecting skills.

Some solutions are defined as scalable simply because the capacity of a system ...