How can I detect and survive being “Slashdotted”?

Question

What\'s a good way to survive abnormally high traffic spikes?

My thought is that at some trigger, my website should temporarily switch into a \"low bandwidth\" mode: swi

Answer 1

I rewrite all URLs referred by several popular sites to be redirected through the coralCDN.

An example for Apache:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^Googlebot
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^CoralWebPrx
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !(^|&)coral-no-serve$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+\.)?digg\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+\.)?slashdot\.org [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+\.)?slashdot\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+\.)?fark\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+\.)?somethingawful\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+\.)?kuro5hin\.org [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+\.)?engadget\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+\.)?boingboing\.net [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+\.)?del\.icio\.us [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+\.)?delicious\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)?$ http://example.com.nyud.net/$1 [R,L]