201984 7 days ago

What is it about HN that overwhelms small servers like this? It was a small static page so I wouldn't think it'd be that much load on the server itself, even for an OrangePi like this one.

Too many simultaneous connections for his router maybe? Or too much bandwidth for his internet connection?

  • binaryturtle 7 days ago

    If they are behind a NAT/ stateful firewall there is just so much connections it will handle at once. I think OpenWRT has like 16K max by default, f.ex. So for less than 16K requests by different users/IPs… each is kept for about 1 minute I think… it quickly will go down, I guess. :)

    cat /proc/sys/net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_max

    Should give some details.

    • 201984 7 days ago

      Do you know if using the DMZ feature on most routers instead of port forwarding would get around this limit, or if there's any other way?

      • binaryturtle a day ago

        With OpenWRT we can increase the limit, if needed. But it's a delicate process you need to balance out carefully depending on your router. I doubled my slots and it works fine:

        It's done via /etc/sysctl.conf

        > net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_max=32768

        Afterwards "sysctl -p" to apply/ reload the config file. But increasing blindly is a bad idea… it needs to be done with ip_conntrack_buckets in sync for proper balance (memory use, CPU usage). Best to read upon it.

        But just going from 16K to 32K shouldn't be any problem for most routers these days.

1vuio0pswjnm7 7 days ago

I wish submitters would try using .onion sites for small static pages, for example as an alternative URL

Fewer source IPs