MetaChat - Mefi impact measured

MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.

08 June 2007

Mefi impact measured →[More:] So the site I linked to yesterday on Mefi went down. I queried the librarian of the host site & got this reply, which partially answers a question I've always wondered about, re: number of people that actually click on the links on mefi.

"FYI, starting at approx 2:30pm yesterday, there has been a huge amount
of traffic for the gateway on the /spcoll/Digit/Geddes/* pages. The
traffic originates from approx 8000 different IP addresses, including
broadband DSL/cable connections and foreign IPs (.ru, .hu, .jp, etc.)
This is either a DDOS attack or there has been some sudden worldwide
interest in these pages.

Regardless of the cause, last night alarms started going off about the
CPU load on the gateway servers. I disabled off-campus access to these
pages overnight, which settled things down. I've turned it back on this
morning. There are still constant requests coming in for these pages,
but at a slightly slower rate. If it gets out of hand again, I may have
to turn the off-campus block back on."

Site is back up now.

post by: rumple at: 13:40 | 5 comments

That thing about the DDOS attack makes me wonder how easy it would be to stage such an attack by using a bit of social engineering instead of more automated means. You could take down a site by hyping it on heavily trafficked blogs like Fark or Digg (or MeFi, apparently). Of course, humans would get bored much quicker than a botnet, but it might get the message across if you were trying to send a warning to someone.

All hypothetically, of course.

posted by backseatpilot 08 June | 13:46

Thanks for the pointer to the site....whoa. Those photographs are just gorgeous.

"Sudden worldwide interest" - ha.

I've had past sites (a mermaid thing and a creepy valentine thing) linked on the front page of mf, and the traffic was insane and almost scary, and that was a couple of years ago. I think both sites were link by mjjj, bless her linky little heart.

posted by iconomy 08 June | 13:47

MeFi is back to getting an FPP link 5K - 10K hits on the first day?

MeFi FPPs used regularly to shut down AngelFire and Tripod sites with limited bandwidth.

posted by shane 08 June | 13:48

backseatpilot: That kind of thing happens at digg already. The last one I saw was a link to some church with the request to hammer their site and download all their media files so the site crashes. Of course, even without that request, sites are regularly crashed by the digg effect.

posted by puke & cry 08 June | 14:34

As a casual user of hosting, it's weird to me they didn't have access to stats to show where everyone was coming from. I can guess why and everything- it just seems strange at first thought. I'm also surprised when people I know who work with computers aren't familiar with stuff like flickr or lolcatz or alternate browsers or blogs in general. "Have you seen The Landlord?!?1" "um, no?" I also wonder if/how much mefi's traffic grew after the subtle shoutout on Mythbusters? Just so many burning questions swirling in my pretty little head.

posted by auntbunny 08 June | 15:44

← Wanna try a Google Image Exquisite Corpse? || FRIDAY SHOUTING THREAD!!! →

HOME || REGISTER || LOGIN