What happens when a website goes viral: how a site keeps up with millions of visitors
Load shedding and rate limiting: why turning some visitors away keeps a website up for the rest
A famous person shares a link. In a few minutes, millions of people tap it, and that is more than all the servers can handle. Big websites then do something that looks rude. They do it on purpose, and it keeps the website fast for most visitors.
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Ten million taps arrive in a few minutes. The edge servers hand out the files, but the guesses alone fill every server you have, and the new ones the autoscaler starts need minutes.
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Let every request in, and the first morning comes back: one long line, a wait that grows for everyone, and timeouts for all. Even the players your servers could have served get nothing.
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