Researching the Slashdot Effect?

leonia asks: "At Columbia University, we are investigating methods and software to automatically deal with sudden, unpredictable load spikes ala the 'Slashdot effect'. We are looking for web sites that have been the 'victim' of this effect who would be willing to share anonymized web logs with us. If you know of a site that went under after it was mentioned on Slashdot or similar site or are the proud owner of such a site, we'd love to talk to you."

Comments

Well,

[MattCohn.com]

isn't there a way to just block refers from high-trafic sites? Who cares if someone gets a 403 when clicking a link from slashdot/cnn/google news/neowin because they are only getting the message if your site would have been hit. Seems simple, and a list could be maintained. While this wouldn't protect you from anything not on the list, neither does antivirus protection.

naive Question?

[pamri]

How come Slashdot itself is never a victim of the 'slashdot effect', atleast on a regular basis as compared to the sites, it links to, considering the typical slashdotter does not read the article linked to.

A simple way to research the Slashdot effect

[darkov]

(1) Setup one or more servers on the end of a fat pipe

(2) Submit an 'Ask Slashdot' asking people to visit a link to the above servers

(3) Wait

(4) Study logs

Drupal's Throttle

[inerte]

There's a PHP script called drupal that has a "throttle" module. Jeremy, the owner of Kernel Trap, developed it after many /. stories with links to his pages.

It generates static files (similar to caches) when access is too high. You can check drupal's cvs (drupal -> modules -> throttle) or go straight to it.

Ps: Some links may contain whitespaces, cut, paste and edit...

Can you see it?

[Otter]

Here's a traffic plot from denbeste.nu's recent clobering...