Specific tips for avoiding the crush, 12/8/97

Error 404--Not Found

From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1:

10.4.5 404 Not Found

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.

If the server does not wish to make this information available to the client, the status code 403 (Forbidden) can be used instead. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address.

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Get ready for the flood
There are ways to shore up your Web site to make sure that sudden increases in traffic don't put you out of commission. Here is our list:

1. Monitor the situation
Make sure you have monitoring tools in place to keep apprised of Web site traffic. Alerts should be sent out when traffic spikes.

2. The beauty of simplicity
Get ready to pare down Web pages to bare-bones content. Graphics and interactive portions such as chats should be able to be turned off to make pages more efficient.

3. Ramp up for the info highway
Install or prepare additional servers and bandwidth. However, keep servers similar to those installed so that configuring and swapping them will be easy.

4. Let somebody else do the cooking
Consider using an Internet service provider to host your content. Sometimes they are more prepared than in-house personnel to deal with sudden increases in traffic.

5. Mirror, mirror
Pre-establish partnerships with other companies, universities or other nonprofit corporations to set up mirror sites. Test these connections ahead of time to make sure that the transferring of information, whether automatic or manually, is done without a hitch.

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