[jeroenhd]

Those 700 clones would all hit at exactly the same time. That's quite a load for a single server, especially since Mercurial can't be cached that easily.

[Mathiasdm]

Mercurial clones can be cached quite easily with 'clonebundles', a Mercurial feature that allows redirecting a clone to instead download a single 'bundle' (which could come from a different server or set of servers).

See https://wiki.mercurial-scm.org/ClonebundlesExtension

[chongli]

So if they're all hitting at exactly the same time, why not set up a firewall rule to block traffic from GitHub at exactly that time of day?

[miyuru]

Setting up a rate limiter is the correct way forward, and using IP block as the nuclear option.