On Sat, 29 May 2004 16:45:44 +0200, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
. . .
On fr; there is now both RSS and Atom...
Is that risky in terms of load ?
Probably not just *yet*, but it could become risky *soon*, and it's hard
to predict just how quickly it will.
The problem is that the way feeds are delivered right now is by polling
with an HTTP GET according to an interval set by the newsreader. The way
that this is implemented, in every newsreader that's available right now,
so far as I know, is by using a fixed interval, which usually defaults to
somewhere between 5 and 15 minutes, and which the user can manually set to
something else (so that, for example, they're not wasting cycles checking
in on a site that never updates more than once daily). Of course, most
users *don't* bother to change the interval, so most feed readers end up
polling your site every 5-15 minutes.
This isn't a big deal if you've got relatively few visitors--particularly
if the server is set up to just send a 304 if there have been no
modifications. But it doesn't scale very well at all: in terms of load,
it's not much different form having one user press the "Reload" button
every few minutes to see whether there have been any changes. As RSS and
Atom syndication become more ubiquitous, and feed readers become more
popular, more and more users are going to want to use services like this
on highly trafficked sites such as WikiPedia. So there's a distinct risk
that the current model won't be sustainable for very much longer.
-C
--
Charles Johnson <technophilia(a)radgeek.com>
AIM: AiPuch
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