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| EA Sports Cup |
| Gent, Belgium |
| 2008/11/15 |
Teams attending
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Fragbite - Inside out
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| posted by: blodan on 2008-01-03, 20:39 |
| viewed: 1601 times |
| comments: 27 |
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page 3: Running Fragbite
Running a website isn’t always as simple as it sounds, at least not when you start getting loads and loads of views. At that time you have to start thinking out a way to start dividing content trough out more servers and different programs.
Lets say you have 500 requests per second and you have everything on the same server and running apache with php/mysql, well in that case apache will start to crumble around 250 requests/s and that’s with small files. But that’s pretty simple to fix with small changes, first of all, lets say that you have 10 pictures on your website. That means every time you request a html/php file your browser will automatically do 10 more request for the pictures, those of you that have your mind with me will probably think, well put the pictures on another server. Yes that is a correct answer, then we got 50 requests to the main server and 450 to the image server. But hey, 450 is still too much isn’t it? Yes, for apache it is, but there are other solutions out there for static content, one of them is called thttpd which can handle up to 720 requests/s, well then it’s a closed deal we use thttpd on the image server. You can also manage the load with web browser caching and so on but that’s a bit more advanced in coding.
That’s just one case/solution of hundreds out there, and my numbers are probably not that accurate either, it´s just to make you realize what problems you actually can have running a huge website. So, lets see what Tomas has to say about it.
The eSports community has always been growing and so has Fragbite, when did you realize that Fragbite actually is on its way to something big or got the feeling, “holy shit, what a load of users we got”?
Samot: We were always aiming for where we are today, and I actually think we had the opposite reaction. We were young and naive, so our reaction was more like “holy shit, where is everybody?” :) But of course there’s times when you look at the stats and think to yourself that it is pretty cool.
What’s the hardest part of running a site this big? Maintaining servers, maintain your code or maybe holding your crew in check?
Samot: They’ve all got their difficulties, but we’re only using five servers, so we don’t really have to do a lot of maintaining. Most of the time the system takes care of itself, in part thanks to our trouble free hosting partners DCS and Endpoint. We’ve been very fortunate to find a great crew, which I enjoy a lot working with.
How many servers are Fragbite currently using to handle your load?
Samot: We’re using five servers, three of which are handling the load -- one web server for dynamic content, one web server for static content and one database server.
A few years back, I think it was somewhere around 2003-2004 Fragbite started to get a so big user load that the server started to crumble. During big events the site could take up to 15 minutes to load.
What were your thoughts/actions back then? Was Fragbite already that big that you could buy new servers from banner/ad income or did you have to dive into your own pockets maybe friends too, to cover the servers? Real servers aren’t that cheap, so to speak.
Samot: Fortunately we had had some revenue at the time to cover the investment of a new server. My brother and I have never spent any money of our own on Fragbite.
Buying the server was actually the least of our worries back then. Since we couldn’t get any new server into the hosting solution we had at the time, we had to go out looking for new partners for hosting. For a site which was entirely dependant on sponsored hosting to stay online it can be quite daunting to leave old stable partnerships behind and start working with new ones :)
If we rewind the time a bit, back to 31st May 2006, something really strange happened. The Swedish police actually went to the hosting company PRQ and seized all their servers hence they had a warrant to take Piratebays servers. I guess they didn’t know which one was Piratebays so they simply took everything, of course there was a problem doing so, hence one of the servers was Fragbites.
When you first heard of this, tell us, what funky words were going through your mind?
Samot: It was all a very surreal situation which we (and many other companies) were just very unfortunate to get caught up in. You feel very left out in a situation like that, because the police is the one that you think you’ll turn to when you’re in a situation where you feel you’re being mistreated by some party. In that situation we felt that we were being mistreated by the police, and had no real way of doing anything about it. It was a very frustrating situation and I really hope we won’t have to work with anything like that again.
Although, what doesn’t kill you strengthens you and it was definitely a learning experience.
Did you have any outside backups at all? Or extra servers that you could have setup, or did the whole future of Fragbite rest in the hands of the Swedish police?
Samot: We had several backups, but unfortunately all of the very recent ones where in the servers that the police had seized. Looking back, that was of course not the way to do it, but sometimes you are forced to compromise when running a small company with limited resources such as Fragbite. We had several extra servers that could’ve easily run the site, the problem was that the police was sitting on our database.
A few days later Fragbite got their servers back and were up n’ running in a couple of hours.
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| #1 |
 tek9.dfb |
2008-01-03 20:43:35 |
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Very very nice article daniel, a new esports writer in the making here. Haven't had time to read all of it, will do so when I get back tonight!
<3 |
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| #2 |
vanz |
2008-01-03 20:48:30 |
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"The founders, Tomas and Filip, brothers of the Hansson family."
mmmm-bob tututututtutututut =) |
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| #3 |
 tek9.sCARFACEEe |
2008-01-03 20:52:22 |
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Great read, was an awesome interview, read most of it when checking stuff, really good stuff.
Good work blodan, keep it up dude! :D |
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| #4 |
tek9.YRN |
2008-01-03 21:03:51 |
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A very very nice interview blodan! excellent work
enjoyed reading it
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| #5 |
 Framp |
2008-01-03 21:14:06 |
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nice |
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| #6 |
 tek9.con |
2008-01-03 21:25:09 |
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great interview |
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| #7 |
tek9.VulcanO |
2008-01-03 21:28:20 |
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nice interview !
edited 2008-01-03 21:28:45
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| #8 |
[R]sandford |
2008-01-03 22:49:08 |
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A fantastic piece of e-sport journalism, refreshing to see you ask some questions that alot of people wouldnt normally ask. The ones that interested me where the ones to do with the site setup and about the crew of the site and how they manage their time.
I hope to see fragbite at some point covered in english. Although some of the translations of interviews they've done in the past have been enjoyable long may this continue!
good job. |
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| #9 |
tek9.Sam |
2008-01-03 23:54:33 |
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very, very nice work blodan !
I actually visit the site now and then, oventhough it's swedish :> |
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| #10 |
 xlo.tomahawk |
2008-01-04 00:24:47 |
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:) |
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| #11 |
 MiB'qbarca |
2008-01-04 00:59:09 |
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good job |
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| #12 |
tek9.Mutz |
2008-01-04 15:59:09 |
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great interview |
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| #13 |
 stylz |
2008-01-05 11:35:17 |
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nice
work |
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| #14 |
tek9.jetset |
2008-01-05 12:32:11 |
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really great stuff Daniel, quality |
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| #15 |
tek9.KNALLER |
2008-01-05 12:38:32 |
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great iview =) |
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| #16 |
my5`deimos |
2008-01-05 21:00:47 |
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nice article! |
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| #17 |
 ekzoN |
2008-01-05 22:16:03 |
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best cs website hands down! |
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| #18 |
 Cph.robban |
2008-01-06 16:15:54 |
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great article, good job! |
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| #19 |
chandler |
2008-01-06 16:16:04 |
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<3 Scar & Pit
1kk |
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| #20 |
ecol |
2008-01-06 18:19:11 |
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nice :-) |
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| #21 |
CQC deffan |
2008-01-06 20:11:19 |
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great stuff
bra jobbat grabben |
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| #22 |
ekvation |
2008-01-06 23:20:21 |
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<3 1kk |
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| #23 |
dr0nt |
2008-01-07 01:02:26 |
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Good stuff, mate! Great answers aswell samot (pik och scar också! :D) |
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| #24 |
phytoN |
2008-01-07 16:51:38 |
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really goood :=) |
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| #25 |
 <3__<3kezM |
2008-01-10 16:12:00 |
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nice article, professionally handled questions.
The Crew section is my fav! |
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| #26 |
infused revoltz |
2008-01-12 04:12:26 |
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nice article, enjoyed |
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| #27 |
tek9.ciseta |
2008-02-12 18:05:02 |
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nice read |
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