I'm sure everyone reading this is familar with the slashdot effect:
This is a companion discussion topic for the original blog entry at: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/08/the-popularity-tax.html
This is a companion discussion topic for the original blog entry at: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/08/the-popularity-tax.html
I love the phrase, “digital ghetto.”
When working with ads this problem goes away and it goes the other way around 
I guess this was posted before bittorrent hit it big. While bittorrent is only slightly less susceptible to restricted uploads (being able to connect to many users will help, but not much of the upload rates are severely limited), it has helped a bit with the popularity problem.
And yet, despite being able to take almost all of the burden off the host for popular files, bittorrent seems to have found little legitimate use. WoW uses it for updates, and I have downloaded many a Linux distro using it, few high content sites have adopted the protocol. This must mean the popularity burden isn’t all that much of a burden for them.
Unfortunately, bittorent may never see widespread use for legitimate purposes due to it’s popularity for pirated movies, music and software. I dare you to find a college network that does not severely restrict p2p traffic, and there have been stories of ISPs doing the same.