To partially overcome above average load limits and to prevent overload, most popular web sites use common techniques like:
- Managing network traffic, by using:
- Firewalls to block unwanted traffic coming from bad IP sources or having bad patterns
- HTTP traffic managers to drop, redirect or rewrite requests having bad HTTP patterns
- Bandwidth management and traffic shaping, in order to smooth down peaks in network usage
- Deploying web cache techniques
- Using different domain names to serve different (static and dynamic) content by separate web servers, e.g.:
- http://images.example.com
... different domain names or computers to separate big files from small and medium-sized files; the idea is to be able to fully cache small and medium-sized files and to efficiently serve big or huge (over 10 - 1000 MB) files by using different settings- Using many internet servers (programs) per computer, each one bound to its own network card and IP address
- Using many internet servers (computers) that are grouped together behind a load balancer so that they act or are seen as one big web server
- Adding more hardware resources (i.e. RAM, disks) to each computer
- Tuning OS parameters for hardware capabilities and usage
- Using more efficient computer programs for web servers, etc.
- Using other workarounds, especially if dynamic content is involved
