[DataCrayon]

We almost had a similar experience with our front-page HN post here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25314170

Except we were not prepared for the traffic, and it took the site down for over 24 hours! Lesson learned...

[hinkley]

On my bucket list is using the "Referer" header to aggressively redirect traffic from hug-of-death websites toward cached pages.

It's been a long time since I've worked somewhere that would benefit from that trick, so I haven't had a chance to use it.

[GordonS]

That post got just over 100 points - very curious to know roughly what kind of traffic you say from it?

[DataCrayon]

Perhaps it was a slow day if 100 points isn't considered that many - I think the high traffic was from being on the front page!

I wish I could quantify the traffic, but it really did wipe out the server, preventing everyone (including myself) from accessing it! I couldn't even remote in to shutdown/reboot.

The last number I had was just as things were grinding to a halt. It was just over 350 "realtime" users according to google analytics!

[GordonS]

Hehe, I didn't mean to say 100 points wasn't a lot, only that it was fairly "standard" for being on the front page, and would make for an interesting metric.