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When RSS Traffic Looks Like a DDoS

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the which-is-most-of-the-time dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Infoworld's CTO Chad Dickerson says he has a love/hate relationship with RSS. He loves the changes to his information production and consumption, but he hates the behavior of some RSS feed readers. Every hour, Infoworld "sees a massive surge of RSS newsreader activity" that "has all the characteristics of a distributed DoS attack." So many requests in such a short period of time are creating scaling issues. " We've seen similiar problems over the years. RSS (or as it should be called, "Speedfeed") is such a useful thing, it's unfortunate that it's ultimately just very stupid.

6 of 443 comments (clear)

  1. netcraft article by croddy · · Score: 4, Informative

    another article

  2. Call me stupid by nebaz · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is helpful.

    --
    Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
  3. Over the years? How about over the weekend? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 5, Informative

    We've seen similiar problems over the years. RSS (or as it should be called, "Speedfeed") is such a useful thing, it's unfortunate that it's ultimately just very stupid.

    And it seems to have gotten worse since the new code was installed- I get 503 errors at the top of every hour now on slashdot.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  4. "it's the connection overhead, stupid" by SuperBanana · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...is what one would say to the designers of RSS.

    Mainly, IF your client is smart enough to communicate that it only needs part of the page, guess what? The pages, especially after gzip compression(which, including with mod_gzip, can be done ahead of time)...the real overhead is all the nonsense, both on a protocol level and for the server in terms of CPU time, of opening+closing a TCP connection.

    It's also the fault of the designers for not including strict rules as part of the standard for how frequently the client is allowed to check back, and, duh, the client shouldn't be user-configured to check at common times, like on the hour.

    Bram figured this out with BitTorrent- the server can instruct the client on when it should next check back.

    --
    Please help metamoderate.
  5. Re:Still haven't tried these newfangled RSS reader by Dr.+Sp0ng · · Score: 4, Informative

    On Windows I use RSS Bandit. Haven't found a non-sucky one for *nix, although I haven't looked all that hard. On OS X I use NetNewsWire, which while not great, does the job.

  6. Publish/Subscribe by dgp · · Score: 4, Informative

    That is mind bogglingly inefficient. Its like POP clients checking for new email every X minutes. Polling is wrong wrong wrong! Check out the select() libc call. Does the linux kernel go into a busy wait loop listening for every ethernet packet? no! it gets interrupted when a packet it ready!

    http://www.mod-pubsub.org/
    The apache module mod_pubsub might be a solution.

    From the mod_pubsub FAQ:
    What is mod_pubsub?

    mod_pubsub is a set of libraries, tools, and scripts that enable publish and subscribe messaging over HTTP. mod_pubsub extends Apache by running within its mod_perl Web Server module.

    What's the benefit of developing with mod_pubsub?

    Real-time data delivery to and from Web Browsers without refreshing; without installing client-side software; and without Applets, ActiveX, or Plug-ins. This is useful for live portals and dashboards, and Web Browser notifications.

    Jabber also saw a publish/subscribe mechanism as an important feature.