Earthquakes Shake Servers, Too 32
Michael Buhrley writes "I felt a pretty good earthquake this afternoon in Tokyo. I immediately went to the Japan Weather Association earthquake information page to see if it had registered the quake, which it had not (the ground was still shaking at this point.) 20 seconds later when I refreshed the page the server had slowed to a crawl.
I had been looking at traffic graphs for one of my servers earlier and thought it would be neat to correlate the traffic data with the seismic data for the event.
I wonder how quickly a noticeable traffic spike could be detected and what other information could be gleaned from the web behavior. Lots of traffic = big quake or quake in big city.
The U.S.G.S. Pasadena Field Office has a page that compares this phenomenon to the Slashdot effect."
Quake (Score:5, Funny)
this already happens to the USGS webservers (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:this already happens to the USGS webservers (Score:2, Informative)
As for the USGS servers having problems after earthquakes, we've been served through Akamai EdgeSuite since late 2001. So for the most part, our servers have been doing better. We've had a co
Analysis of geographical location of browsers (Score:1)
Let me get this straight (Score:4, Funny)
You must live somewhere besides Tokyo or Calif (Score:2)
The USGS has a great web site where you can fill out a survey that assigns a Richter value to what you felt then add the value to a dynamic "shake map"
Re:You must live somewhere besides Tokyo or Calif (Score:4, Informative)
The Richter Scale isn't really used anymore. It's originaly purpose was to measure vertical ground motion and it loses its accuracy above something like an 8.5
What is used now is something called the Moment Magnitude Scale that actually computes the amount of energy released in an earthquake. It is fairly similiar to the Richter Scale when you compare magnitudes of earthquakes. Obligatory linkage [ualr.edu]. One thing to note though is that each step up in the MMS is an increase of 30 the amount of energy an earthquake releases. So a 6.0 releases 30 times more energy than a 5.0
Basically what this comes down to is that people will think "Oh good! We had a 6.0 on the San Andreas Fault! So that should release some energy built up!" The SAF is capable of producing about an 8.0 here in Southern California, so it would take 900 6.0's to equal the energy of an 8.0
5-7-5 (Score:5, Funny)
the earth is moving
server room epicenter
earthquake or slashdot?
Hrmm... (Score:1)
Oh wait...
Earthquakes and response (Score:4, Informative)
One of the cool things about that site is the fact that you can report what you felt in your area and they create a shake map based on the reports. Within 10 minutes there were already about 15,000 reports that people sent in and that number climbed quite a bit as the morning went on.
Part of my reason for logging onto the site after an earthquake is curiosity. I want to know where it was centered and how big it was. I think that has to do with a lot of other people's reasons for logging on as well.
Re:Earthquakes and response (Score:1)
All earthquake reports will still be there at 10 a.m.
c.
Re:Earthquakes and response (Score:1)
However, I am a geek. And a geologist.
Re:Earthquakes and response (Score:2)
You're retarded, but that gets a 5 here. (Score:1)
c.
Flash Crowds (Score:1)
Not really new... (Score:1)
Re:Not really new... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not really new... (Score:1)
Bear in mind that the information in there about our server setup is
No quakes (Score:1)
I think my chair is too comfortable because i've been in the room with people that have felt them before. I've also slept through quite a few of them.
However, i have felt the slashdot effect many times.
USGS (Score:2, Interesting)
I found the way that the USGS down in LA ended up implimenting Load Balancing even more informative then the fact that Michael went to check the information of the website. After all in the many quakes I've felt, I've always gone to the USGS Website [usgs.gov] once during and a number of times afterwards to find out both the epicenter (One was too damn close) and the magnitude. And in two cases the website was updating the start and end of the quake while I was reloading.
It's actually nice to see a government agency
Recent earthquake have been happening... (Score:1)
c.
Slashdot effect (Score:4, Informative)
As for utilizing this, I suppose you could set up a script that monitors such sites in a manner akin to ping. Although I think that most administrators would prefer you didn't. Get a bunch of such clients going and you effectively have an accidental denial of service attack.
Further such monitoring only works on servers that aren't designed for high traffic. Put an other way, what would cause a slowdown for your local paper is likely very different from what would cause a slowdown to CNN. Further as servers are upgraded you lose your "baseline."
So there is an effect and the effect correleates to what is "significant" to the readers of that site. But doing much with the information would be hard.
Having said that though someone had a joke about an early warning system built by checking Drudge Report (a popular American news portal). It probably is a good idea. When there is breaking news most people go to the Drudge Report because he typically links to the best information about the news. He further tends to put important breaking stories in red.
other events could be monitored (Score:4, Funny)
Like, say if CNN is getting pounded you could have it look around and find what else is getting hits: earthquake, DOI info sites, NOAA...
You might be able to get a disaster level and possibly related causation out of it.
Disaster level: red
Possible breaking news: microsoft.com, slashdot.org, theregister.co.uk
(had to get the anti-MS in there somewhere...)
Vibration of Hardware effects? (Score:1)
CDC does similar work (Score:5, Informative)
The way they really have any idea what's going on is massive correllation of many databases. School absenteeism jumps in an area combined with a local increase in NyQuil purchases or something like that.
Imagine... (Score:1)
Umbrellas (Score:1)
Slashquake (Score:3, Funny)