Slashdot Mirror

here's a mirror, good luck fair server
http://www.preinheimer.com/dump/Es3b-en.pdf

These are all very good tips. There are also several things you can do with just one box:

- PHP has lots of caching options available and other things that can boost performance. Learn them. One good overview is in the powerpoint slideshow here. Just like you can't put a heavy building on a weak foundation, it's very hard to speed up an app that's badly written in the first place.

- SQL can be badly misused. Make sure that your page uses as few queries as possible and that those queries are as good as possible. Don't use PHP for things that SQL does very well--joins, filtering, etc. Your goal should be for every database query to return as much information as you need to build the page and not an ounce more.

- you can take a half-step towards multiple boxes by running multiple servers on one box. Apache is great but it's overkill for static work like serving images--look at tux, boa, lighttpd, thttpd, etc. for those duties. For example, serve the app from www.example.com on Apache and the images from images.example.com via Boa. Or, have Apache on :80 and serve images via Boa on :8080.

- the last thing to do before splitting up to multiple servers is to get one better box. from the box you describe, you might realize a 200-300% improvement with a fast dual-CPU box with 2-4 GB RAM and either a) RAID or b) different disks for different tasks--logs (writes) on one, images (reads) on another, etc.

- be scientific. measure, make one change, and measure again.

- many things can be quickly tested before being fully implemented. turn off logging and see if performance improves. if it doesn't, then there's no reason to go through the trouble of making /var/log/ and NFS mounted share. visit the site using a browser with images turned off to see how much faster it is when images aren't being asked for.

- on a related note, determine where the bottlenecks are before optimizing. There's no reason to split image-serving duties if the only image you have is your logo and a couple nav buttons.

- if possible, when you're done, do a writeup and submit it to slashdot. I always say "the best way to be successful is to find someone who has done what you want to do and copy them" and your experiences might help the next person who's in the same boat you're in now.

- talk to people who have experience building fast servers. there's lots of stuff to know. for just one example, I've often heard that PIIIs and PIII Xeons are better than P4s for almost all server duties. there are religious wars in server land as well--SCSI vs. ATA, etc.--but talk to a few people and patterns will emerge.

I have a feeling that this would be a pretty BAD IDEA (check out that bowtie and haircut!)

That said, 20 years later, Steve Jobs has taken the hint. Black turtlenecks look good on just about anyone

If your school is just throttling Bittorrent, you can easily change the ports. Just go into the Options of whatever client you're using and change the port range to something high (like 49000-49300). Or, if you want to be extra careful/paranoid, you can change it to port 80 or such so anyone who views your computer would assume its a web server or such.

If you are actually behind a real firewall, there is really no way around it, unless your school leaves you some ports open. You can visit a Port Tester and try a few common ports (52, 80, 81, 110, etc.) to see if any of them go through. If one does, just change Bittorrent's port to that port. If none go through, then.. well, you're outta luck.

http://www.preinheimer.com/1984macintro.mov

Good Luck fair box