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

Never become popular.

While that will work, it's not real helpful. What you need infrastructure that can scale on very short. Something like Google Gears or Amazon's web services seems ideal for this, since even Slashdot's not going to overwhelm Google or Amazon. If you want your own server make sure your network provider isn't going to cut you off at any preset bandwidth limit. Buy enough hardware so that you're not straining just to carry your normal traffic without any slack to handle sudden spikes.