What is the Slashdot Effect?

MANY websites often give a brief synopsis of a story and work as springboards offering a link to another website which carries the whole story. Interested readers click on the link leading them to the referenced site. When large masses of users flock to the site at the same time, it overloads the site, causing it to slow down or even temporarily close. This is called the Slashdot effect and the site is said to be Slashdotted.

The phenomenon has been named after Slashdot, an award-winning technology

SCIENCE BYTE

THERE is a type of beetle commonly known as a firefly. In the South American country of Ecuador, the peasants have become adept at trapping these glowing insects in transparent sacs and selling them as nightlights! In some areas, fireflies sit in their thousands on trees, flicking their lights on and of f , transforming them i nt o gi ant Christmas trees.

Light from living organisms is called bioluminescence. Marine animals also produce this light, called 'cold' light, because of the reaction of two substances in their bodies called 'luciferin' and 'luciferase'. related news website launched in 1997. The website’s readers submit stories with links, inviting comments to start threaded discussions among users. The trouble starts when an article on the front page attracts an unusually large number of hits and causes a temporary surge in traffic on the linked website.

Major news sites or corporate websites are designed to deal with such large numbers of hits and therefore do not normally experience this e f fe c t . Webs i t e s wi t h s mal l b a n d wi d t h s , however, are ill equipped to deal with this kind of traffic jam. They are used to getting only a few thousand hits a day and when the Slashdot effect occurs, the numbers can range from several hundred to several thousand hits per minute!