optimization

UPDATE: I've updated some of the numbers below to reflect corrections for a testing error. Let's just say to be sure not to benchmark with any external links in your test pages (because if you do use external links you'll obviously be benchmarking the external server too, which is not what we want in this case). To summarize the effect of these corrections - having lighttpd in front of Apache and pipelining actually provide a substantially larger boost in performance than I had indicated before. Other than that the results are the same.

During the course of administering a server full of various sites which have been Farked, Dugg, and StumbledUpon'd, I've learned first hand the value of optimizing a Drupal site/server to handle large amounts of traffic. I've also learned that eventually it's likely that the level of optimization for one's Drupal site/server will be rendered mostly irrelevant by frequent, and (mostly) malicious, circumstances.

Malicious and/or misdirected requests
Compared to more popular subjects such as Drupal optimization, Apache, MySQL, and/or PHP optimization - the subject of malicious requests gets a rare mention. Despite losing the popularity contest to those sexier subjects, rest assured, there is a lot more to running a site than just tuning the former items. All of those things can be working really, really well and your site/server can still be hammered to a state of dysfunction - even with very few users coming through the site.

Welcome to the wonderful world of denial of service attacks and/or server spam. Broadly defined this includes anything that is requesting something from your server that is of a malicious (usually the case) and/or misguided origin. Make no mistake it's a problem which anyone who is running a medium to large size web site will contend with, whether they know it or not.