BBC on Website Slow Downs

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Friday March 21, 2003 @08:00AM from the sure-gets-tricky dept.

HiveMaster writes "The BBC is carrying a report about the impact on websites as people try to get news regarding the war in Iraq. It talks of a report from Keynote Systems, which tests the reponsiveness of websites, which shows that the BBC news site has shown a fourfold increase in response times. However, Government sites in both the US and the UK are being hit, with the US Army site taking over 80 seconds to load at peak times." Also, here is a press release this. You can also read My journal where I've talked quite a bit about what Slashdot has done in preperation for traffic bursts.

38 of 206 comments (clear)

Hmmm... by TopShelf · 2003-03-21 08:03 · Score: 3, Funny

so if Taco posts a link to his own journal in the article header, can he /. /.???

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1. Re:Hmmm... by Kircle · 2003-03-21 08:17 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  nope, but an interesting side effect could probably be more ad impressions and as a result, more revenue. honestly, /. could easily get more advertising impressions if they started temporarily mirroring the content from the stories posted on slashdot. everyone knows about the slashdot effect. why not use that in a manner where both slashdot and slashdot readers benefit?
  
  --
  -- Kircle
2. Re:Hmmm... by Chibi · 2003-03-21 08:19 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I've always wondered, why is /. immune to the /. effect anyway?
  
  Here's a link to the "Tech" section of the FAQ, which is probably a good place to start.
  
  --
  If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
3. Re:Hmmm... by John+Zebedee · 2003-03-21 08:24 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  How much / could a /.ter / if a /.ter could /. /.?
  
  --
  The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet. -- William Gibson
4. Re:Hmmm... by dhovis · 2003-03-21 08:31 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  OK, why did this get modded up?
  
  Slashdot is a high traffic website, and as such, it has to be designed to handle the load that it gets. Sites that get /.ed are usually low traffic sites that aren't set up to the sort of page views that Slashdot.
  
  OTOH, Slashdot generally doesn't have any effect on other high traffic sites. You don't see the /. effect on sites like CNN, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, or the NY Times. It is when Slashdot links to someone who put up a picture of their case mod, they likely aren't set up to handle the same sort of traffic that /. does and they become inaccessable.
  
  --
  --
  The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
5. Re:Hmmm... by Error27 · 2003-03-21 08:43 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Because it runs on MySQL.
Your Journal? by SuDZ · 2003-03-21 08:03 · Score: 3, Funny

Shameless plug for your journal to get us to read it? ;)

SuDZ
and it won't get any better... by babyblink · 2003-03-21 08:03 · Score: 5, Funny

since you just slashdot it...

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[self dealloc];
Satellite availability? by caseyc · 2003-03-21 08:04 · Score: 5, Informative

Another factor that may be contributing to this is a sudden drop in availability of communications satellites. The Department of Defense has been buying up bandwidth on commercial com satellites for their own use during the war.
1. Re:Satellite availability? by stef0x77 · 2003-03-21 08:45 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Most of the net traffic, particularly across the atlantic travels on under-sea cables. Satellites are ususally used for remote areas or backup comnunications, due to latency and bandwidth issues.
Re:God bless the Internet! by at_kernel_99 · 2003-03-21 08:05 · Score: 4, Interesting

Curiously enough, Pravda also has a story on the subject.
Put a proxy-cache in front of it. by iturbide · 2003-03-21 08:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

Basically, as long as you don't get a bandwith problem, putting a proxy-cache configured for acceleration in front of the website itself is the way to go. In times like this, 95% of the visitors wants the same news. The cache will serve them their data, so that the server itself does not die under the load of having to rethink every individual request.
1. Re:Put a proxy-cache in front of it. by djh101010 · 2003-03-21 08:56 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  While a proxy-cache takes care of the server load issues, it just fixes half of the problem. Your cache then becomes the limiting factor, and the same problems with servicing the connections and load just gets displaced from one box to another.
  
  Page load times can be vastly improved by hiring someone with a bunch of capacity spread around the country/world, and having the content served from the closest server to the user. Akamai is one provider, there are probably others. Effectively, it gives you thousands of webservers to handle your load. Beats trying to predict when and how much the load is going to spike. (I wonder if any akamaized sites have been slashdotted, and how the usage graphs for that look?)
2. Re:Put a proxy-cache in front of it. by BrookHarty · 2003-03-21 09:03 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  IF your data can be cached. Same thing with slashdot, the webpage is rendered depending on your karma, and account. Cache wont work, when its re-rendered for each person. (It should work for all the AC's loading the same page thou...)
  
  We use cheap netra t1's in a cluster behind load balancers, but our bandwidth usage per user is very small (1-5K) compared to Slashdot 50-100K page pulls.
  
  Strange how people design networks and server configurations without knowing the purpose. This is why when a product is handed off to the customer, they customers end up redesignning the architecture. Its not a cookie cutter world people...
  
  -
  You know the world's gone mad when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the USA of arrogance and the Germans don't want to go to war.
Comment removed by account_deleted · 2003-03-21 08:05 · Score: 4, Interesting

Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ace's Hardware does it best. by BoomerSooner · 2003-03-21 08:05 · Score: 4, Interesting

They run the whole thing off of a Sun Blade 500MHz with 2GB RAM.

Pretty cool actually.
oi by Judg3 · 2003-03-21 08:05 · Score: 4, Funny

"Here's a bunch of links to some sites that are really really unresponsive now because of the war. Everyone please go check them out"

There's a joke in there somewhere, for sure.

--
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
Good idea... by bahwi · 2003-03-21 08:05 · Score: 4, Funny

The BBC is under heavy load. Click here to see how slow their website is loading!
slashdot by WPIDalamar · 2003-03-21 08:05 · Score: 3, Funny

great, talking about web site slow downs, and then we go slashdot them!
Give credit where credit is due by Mothra+the+III · 2003-03-21 08:06 · Score: 4, Funny

Where is the term "Slashdot effect" in this article?

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Worst. Sig. Ever.
Fourfold!?? by TrevorB · 2003-03-21 08:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

Let's see. Loading the news.bbc.co.uk from Western Canada, right... now!

10 seconds to render the whole page. OK, that's been significantly faster than I've been experiencing the last few days, It's been about 30-40 seconds in some instances in the past several days.

Do try the low graphics version of the BBC, it loads almost instantly, and you can click on "Low Graphics" version while the rest of the page is trying to load.

CNN does seem significantly better than years ago during major events. They must have tackling the planetary event slashdot effect thing down. But then again, I voted "Any non-us venue" on the poll.. :)
1. Re:Fourfold!?? by CheeseburgerBlue · 2003-03-21 08:19 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  The use of the term "fourfold" itself nails the headline as coming from the BBC.
  
  A more North American slant would have been something pithier like "lots mucher."
  
  --
  I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
BBC Website Slows Down by Saggy · 2003-03-21 08:09 · Score: 4, Funny

In other news, the BBC's website slows down as Slashdot, news for nerds, reports on the BBC reporting about website slow downs...
Oh my God! They've slashdotted Bagdhad! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-03-21 08:10 · Score: 3, Funny

You BASTARDS!
How ironic... by meringuoid · 2003-03-21 08:10 · Score: 4, Interesting

... Slashdot making preparations for traffic spikes. I think we richly deserve to get massacred for days - shall we say ten minutes of downtime for every website we've blasted off the net over the years?
ISTR that the NYT websute switched to a very graphics-light format in 11 September 2001, in order to cope with the mass traffic. Slashdot is already mostly text, but if necessary it could be lightened a bit. But I imagine the main load is CPU and memory, handling all those database queries and updates, rather than bandwidth; I don't see an easy way of dealing with that short of adding a few more machines. Imagine a... No, I won't :-)

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Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Light pages by rednaxel · 2003-03-21 08:11 · Score: 5, Interesting

This shows the importance of light pages. The wide use of broad band has led many to ignore old guidelines. There's a lot of bloated pages with tons of ill-optimized pics and unnecessary gadgets.
According this, the average web page is around 90 Kb. Google is a little over 10 Kb.

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1. Re:Light pages by NerveGas · 2003-03-21 08:22 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Actually, the pages probably don't have a whole lot to do with it. Transmition is light. You can saturate a 100 mbit link without much hardware at all.
  
  The real expense is in the database processing. The cost of performing even a relatively simple SQL query is generally a lot higher than the cost of serving out several large images.
  
  steve
  
  --
  Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Iraq too by GiMP · 2003-03-21 08:16 · Score: 3, Interesting

Iraq's website, www.uruklink.net, has been inaccessible quite often.. during the few occassions it has been online, it has been terribly slow.
Also a problem for places outbound connections by Sabalon · 2003-03-21 08:23 · Score: 3, Interesting

My boss came to me around the 13th asking what were we gonna do on the 17th if we went to war...basically, how are mission critical apps gonna communicate over our school's internet connection if everyone is streaming video of war coverage?

Luckily Shock and Awe started after most of our classes were done for the week and Thurs wasn't that bad. I guess with all the Kazaa traffic, streaming web didn't stand a chance :)

Can't wait for that packetshaper to get here.
If you're a sysadmin... by Patman · 2003-03-21 08:24 · Score: 4, Informative

...especially for a large site, consider deploying something like Squid for times like these.

Make it transparent most of the time, but on days like today, cache CNN.com, MSNBC.com, Foxnews.com, whatever. Cuts down on bandwidth utilization both for your company and for the target site.
Comment removed by account_deleted · 2003-03-21 08:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

Comment removed based on user account deletion
emergency web pages? by fermion · 2003-03-21 08:29 · Score: 4, Insightful

Why is this news. Web pages are so bloated with ads, gratuitous graphics, useless animation, and calls to 10 different servers that set 20 different cookies that they barely meet usability guidelines in normal situations. Given this bloat is acceptable design, it is no wonder that the pages fail under stressful situation. There are a few exceptions to this, /. being one of them. Usually very good response, and apparently a good understanding of bottlenecks that can be removed to improve performance.
I would reference Home Page Usability in which rule #94 is to have an alternate home page for times of emergency. The New York Times had a successful deployment of such a page on 9/11, and seems to be meeting demand now. I wonder how many others agencies have emergency web pages set up that can better meet demand.

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"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
a force stronger than the slashdot effect by CySurflex · 2003-03-21 08:33 · Score: 3, Funny

War on Iraq is causing all these web sites to slow down?!?
Finally a force stronger than the slashdot effect.
Next/Prev Links - possible high-traffic workaround by MattRog · 2003-03-21 08:36 · Score: 3, Insightful

It is pretty easy -- make them non-dynamic, something along the lines of:
<- prev | next ->

Which points to something like "current_article_url&goto=prev" and "current_article_url&goto=next". That would avoid a database call until you actually click the link (it would translate that into the actual previous and next articles and then show the correct one).

Of course, you lose a little bit of the dynamic site aspect but if you *really* can't remember what the next article was you can always keep the main page open in a new browser window/tab and refer back to it.

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Thanks,
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Matt
thanks by Lxy · 2003-03-21 08:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

Slashdot team:

I know I'll be unpopular by saying this, but thanks for all the hard work. You guys have a lot of experience handling rediculous loads, so when stuff like this comes around, /. stands firm. While the rest of the internet is slowing to a crawl, I can depend on pretty nice response times from you. On Sept 11, /. was one of the only news sites that was actually responding. When I can't get a TV, I'll be checking /. for war coverage. I know a lot of people are complaining that war isn't "News for Nerds", but it most certainly is news and I'm glad /. has stepped up to the call of duty on this one.

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:wq
Another factor: more streaming by gilesjuk · 2003-03-21 08:48 · Score: 4, Informative

More people are streaming live news feeds than normal.
see bbc's own website stats by Anonymous Coward · 2003-03-21 09:02 · Score: 4, Interesting

If you want to see oodles of stats about the BBC's own website, take a gander at http://support.bbc.co.uk/support

Lots of mrtg graphs, response times, uptimes etc. Even a webcam of the support team :-)
DOS attacks on financial sites by Space+cowboy · 2003-03-21 09:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

We host a fair few (60 or so) financial-orientated websites, with an average query-level of some 10-20 queries per second on the database supporting those sites.

We have an 8-way cluster of machines to support this (way-overkill for the most part) but recently, we've been (almost) hitting limits... The apache service has logged peaks of 1000 connections/second, with the DB query-level going as high as 70,000/second....

I'm actually fairly happy that the system can more-or-less cope with the load, but nonetheless, I want to make sure (or at least as-sure-as-possible) that we can't be easily DOS'd, so this weekend I'll be writing an Apache module to monitor the number-of-connections-per-second on an IP-by-IP basis, and take a decision to run a script depending on thresholds....

I think stateful firewalls could probably manage it but for historical reasons we're stuck with what we have, and having apache call a bandwidth-limiting script on an IP address that's registered 5000 hits in the last minute (for example) seems reasonable :-)

If there's something that can do this already, I'd like to know - I've found (ntal), but running a script per packet doesn't appeal :-( I prefer the idea of hitting a limit in Apache that triggers a script that limits access (dynamic firewalls)

Ideas gratefully received :-)

Simon

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