The Panda’s Thumb is currently down while we sort out some bandwidth issues. The Thumb was so popular yesterday that it was consuming all the bandwidth and more, peaking out at nearly 900kbps on a DSL connection that was only supposed to be 768kbps. Other machines on the connection lost their net access.
For a quick fix yesterday, Wesley and I added some modules to the webserver to cut down on its traffic. This was temporary until we could set up a firewall to control the traffic for us. We are now working on the firewall, but the server is off the net until someone can make some local modifications.
Is PT getting legitimate traffic, or is this a DoS attack?
I haven’t looked at the access logs, but I figure it was legitimate traffic. The server was not overwealmed and incomming bandwith was not a problem. Outgoing bandwidth was a problem in that it was swamping the connection.
Posting started taking much much longer when KwickXML went in. Of course, it could just be a coincidence.
Was a story on the Thumb picked up by a major blog? I think we all know what can happen to a site when Slashdot, Fark, or some other extremely popular site makes a link to a less popular site. Or did the Thumb’s popularity slowly creep up to levels which cause problems? If so the return of students to school combined with Dover soon to heat up might result in yet higher bandwith.
Perhaps it was the piece that linked to 179 other blogs.
IDK how PT works, but here are some suggestions which might make sense.
1 Bathroom Wall which shows the latest 50 posts by default
2 Main page with many fewer entries
3 alternate main page for the regulars, which avoids the PT top-of-the-page graphic
those might make sense, might not, hope something works.
Maybe the increase in traffic is due to the interest in the ID controversy caused by Bush’s statements. If so, let’s hope they get back up soon: if people (media especially) come a’googlin, you want other voices than the DI out there.
We’re working on improvements to the BW to help with server load. The issue is how to migrate from a bw that is a simple post to one that is not.
Update