HTTP Connection Management, From 10 Users To 100 million

A website’s infrastructure always starts simply and for good reason, we don’t have users and we want to get back to writing code.

But, as a website grows, that Apache config you copied from stackoverflow is going to hit the wall. So in this talk we’ll cover the problems, signs of impending doom and typical solutions needed to get from 10 users to 100 million.

Bullet points!

• Common web servers and how far they can get on their own.
• Signs of trouble, or why ‘top’ won’t tell you there’s a problem.
• Load-balancing, software vs hardware.
• Making the web faster for your users, especially in Europe.
• Oh, load-balancing webservers, that’s quaint. Try load-balancing continents. Love, GSLB.

This is a mid-level technical talk, aimed at the developer or ops guy who’s looking at the next step, or wondering where the last one went wrong.