Reminder that being #1 or #2 on hacker news is about 1.5 page loads per second. If your side explodes when it hits HN, something has gone horribly wrong on your end
dee@social.treehouse..
replied 27 May 2025 13:59 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/533WtkYXhGwl3m42cv
benjojo
replied 27 May 2025 14:01 +0000
in reply to: https://social.treehouse.systems/users/dee/statuses/114580150454574831
@dee But it's kinda always been like this, even back in 2017 or 2015 I was seeing similar numbers I think there are just a lot of jank setups that explode when they hit more than 2 hits per second of dynamic requests
xrisk@social.treehou..
replied 27 May 2025 14:05 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/533WtkYXhGwl3m42cv
@benjojo not to be that guy, but I noticed your blog is hosted on Cloudflare. is it possible they’re absorbing a lot of your traffic? (not sure how you’re measuring the RPS)
benjojo
replied 27 May 2025 14:07 +0000
in reply to: https://social.treehouse.systems/users/xrisk/statuses/114580176819359093
@xrisk These graphs are made from CF logs, I used to work at CF so I have log push enabled on my domain. I still use CF because it saves me money on google app engine :)
breizh@pleroma.breiz..
replied 27 May 2025 15:09 +0000
in reply to: https://social.treehouse.systems/users/xrisk/statuses/114580176819359093
benjojo
replied 27 May 2025 15:25 +0000
in reply to: https://pleroma.breizh.pm/objects/d3ed3ff7-db9b-4df0-9346-5fcaaaa1cfda
@breizh @xrisk In case you cannot see my reply: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/1nyPkm34Gx243xQJ7H The difference between cloudflare and not cloudflare is my google app engine bill, and not much else.
breizh@pleroma.breiz..
replied 27 May 2025 15:31 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/5JqwyrF2fX2g7JQZTS
wolf480pl@mstdn.io
replied 27 May 2025 14:06 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/533WtkYXhGwl3m42cv
benjojo
replied 27 May 2025 14:08 +0000
in reply to: https://mstdn.io/users/wolf480pl/statuses/114580178117297118
@wolf480pl that 10 RPS is the "impulse" that happens when you first get into HN's front page, mostly due to bots picking stuff up and posting it to various places
tef@mastodon.social
replied 27 May 2025 14:06 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/533WtkYXhGwl3m42cv
benjojo
replied 27 May 2025 14:07 +0000
in reply to: https://mastodon.social/users/tef/statuses/114580178602315045
kallemp@cr8r.gg
replied 27 May 2025 14:09 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/533WtkYXhGwl3m42cv
benjojo
replied 27 May 2025 14:11 +0000
in reply to: https://cr8r.gg/users/kallemp/statuses/114580191856595640
@kallemp halons razor would suggest that a terrible tech stack is more likely (think, a out of the box wordpress setup with apache, and MySQL connections set to something microscopic and no cache)
a1ba@suya.place
replied 27 May 2025 14:18 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/533WtkYXhGwl3m42cv
@benjojo it tells me that barely anybody, in fact, cares about HN.
Which is good, honestly. The only place that has worse comments than HN is probably Phoronix.
benjojo
replied 27 May 2025 14:32 +0000
in reply to: https://suya.place/objects/907800c3-8abe-478c-af62-0b1d060bbe2d
@a1ba I dunno, 1-2 page opens/s is pretty decent numbers. it's still one of the largest sources of traffic a blog can get. Here is a requests per second (not page loads) graph of what HN (the first spike) looks like compared to the last bump that is the being on the front page of golem.de and heise.de, two reasonably large publications in germany
a1ba@suya.place
replied 27 May 2025 14:36 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/Y3ZqSWK9ZN2b8vmcDD
fazalmajid@social.vi..
replied 27 May 2025 14:42 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/533WtkYXhGwl3m42cv
@benjojo grotestquely inefficient blogging software like WordPress and its plugins that will often make 20+ MySQL queries per page load will do that to you. BTW what is the web analytics software you use? I need to replace mine.
benjojo
replied 27 May 2025 14:45 +0000
in reply to: https://social.vivaldi.net/users/fazalmajid/statuses/114580320115649617
@fazalmajid I don't have any, I just download cloudflare logs (I think this is still a paid thing only) and put them into clickhouse and view them in grafana
Flyingmana@phpc.soci..
replied 27 May 2025 16:17 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/533WtkYXhGwl3m42cv
@benjojo one problem is, you talk of avarages, but having like 50 requests at the same second, additionally to your normal traffic can cascade down, even more if they then click through the side and hit multiple uncached pages and functionalities. (Still should be able to handle it, but usually thats not part of the prioritieres compared to features)
benjojo
replied 27 May 2025 16:34 +0000
in reply to: https://phpc.social/users/Flyingmana/statuses/114580694870269034
@Flyingmana Ok sure, but the "50 requests at the same second" basically only happens for the first 2 seconds you appear on the front page (or you are linked in fediverse), everything after should be easy. I'm not talking about sites getting slow for a second, I am talking about sites getting "KO'd" by being on hacker news, when that means about 1 to 2 full page loads a second
lx@swiss.social
replied 27 May 2025 18:25 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/533WtkYXhGwl3m42cv
@benjojo Reminded me of this: https://idiallo.com/blog/surviving-the-hug-of-death (amazing visualization)
I guess that in cases where the site goes down it wasn't just 1.5 loads per second (malicious or not).
benjojo
replied 27 May 2025 18:30 +0000
in reply to: https://swiss.social/users/lx/statuses/114581199577487025
@lx Well there is a difference between page loads per second and "I have 90 javascript files, and 3 GraphQL queries per page" My post is maybe 4 or 5 requests all in, The new york times is 110+
benjojo
replied 27 May 2025 14:06 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/533WtkYXhGwl3m42cv
Reminder that @manawyrm and @Toble_Miner 's Casio fx-9750GII Calculator can mostly remain on HN's front page, why on earth do other peoples sites go down when they hit HN
bert_hubert@eupolicy..
replied 27 May 2025 14:07 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/533WtkYXhGwl3m42cv
@benjojo can confirm. I host on a relatively anemic server from home and my site hits HN a few times per year and I don't even notice.
troed@swecyb.com
replied 27 May 2025 14:14 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/533WtkYXhGwl3m42cv
@benjojo Interesting - sharing a link on Mastodon is about the same for 30-60 seconds and that a lot of site owners have huge problems with.
freelon@mas.to
replied 27 May 2025 14:46 +0000
in reply to: https://swecyb.com/users/troed/statuses/114580212106406964
@troed @benjojo a year or so ago there was a discussion about that because someone was complaining that fediverse links would mean a ddos attack. I tried it out at that time and the out-of-the-box setup of wordpress gave up quickly on my 4core/8gb server.
https://mas.to/@freelon/112463814614563336
maswan@mastodon.acc...
replied 27 May 2025 16:07 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/533WtkYXhGwl3m42cv
@benjojo
Huh, that's roughly where slashdotting were in the early 00s. Back then fine to serve perl cgis off a pentium pro server, if you didn't write too badly broken code.
mb@mastodon.art
replied 28 May 2025 16:37 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/533WtkYXhGwl3m42cv
benjojo
replied 27 May 2025 14:56 +0000
in reply to: https://chaos.social/users/sa/statuses/114580363827943218
@sa Yeah you are mostly right, these days I am seeing a lot of cases like this https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/2V42ZyntH6bvv82NWT where CF kills a site while it's #1 on HN, a great look for a company that used to be " dont go down with large traffic spikes " as their mission