What the title says. I think there is still a long way for that to happen but i’ve been hopeful. What do you think?

  • astral_avocado@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    Does it really spread out the load? Every instance will want to connect to the larger instances and replicate their data, or the larger instances could hug the smaller ones to death if a popular post gets noticed. I am spitballing, but from what I understand more instances means inducing larger and larger loads on everyone.

    • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      Yes, but there are shortcomings. It spreads out the load in the sense that for every user served by a small instance, that is bandwidth that a big server didn’t need to spend for those additional users. It only needs to pass a data item to the small instance once instead of to each user as the clients interact with it, saving it resources compared to having to serve each user directly. I believe only actually subscribed communities are fully replicated, but I’m reaching my limits of understanding.

      As for the hug of death of small instances that just posted something popular in their own local community, you got me there. Hope that server can handle the load. So far it hasn’t been a problem AFAIK but it could become one.

    • scottlowe@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      More instances may also introduce more database consistency issues. It all depends on how the application scales. It it’s designed to scale out, might be fine.