31 Mar 05

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect

Slashdot effect
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Slashdot effect is a particular example of how a popular website can cause a smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close after causing a great increase in the number of visitors going to the smaller site. The huge influx of web traffic is a result of it being mentioned on Slashdot, a popular technology news and information site. Typically, less robust sites are unable to cope with the huge increase in traffic and become unavailable ? either their bandwidth is consumed or their servers are unable to cope with the high strain.