Server load from the client side

Hello, i wanna to ask about the load on your server from the client side. In the future, it will happen that a lot of people will come in, in 1 minute there are more than 10000+ connections, I’m afraid that everything will fall. Maybe I’m wrong and everything will be fine, but I would like to hear your opinion on this, I’m sure you will tell me how best to do it. There will also be a redirect through Cloud Flair. If it matters.

Hi, @DeeFreaze. The answer, like the answer to so many questions, is: “It depends.”

A single “page load” or “connection” is often made up of dozens or even hundreds of individual HTTP requests.

So, 10000 connections might be 10K requests or 2M requests. Which it is depends on the design of the site.

Also, there is a question about what “backs” or handles the HTTP requests. For example, if your site is mostly static files and not heavily reliant on Functions, our CDN scales incredibly well for such type of responses.

However, the concurrency for an individual account’s Functions is less than the rate for which static files can be served. Some frameworks are more heavily dependent for Functions than others for server-side processing. Also, even within an individual framework, the Functions use is highly dependent on the design of the site itself.

For example, one might have a Next.js site where every request is backed by a Function. However, a different Next.js site on the same account might use entirely static files. It just depends on the sites’ designs.

Now, I’ve include the caveat above about Functions only for completeness. I checked the account associated with this forum email address and none of those sites use any Functions at all. So, while that point above is an important consideration, it doesn’t apply to your sites at all at this time. (Now, if the site you are asking about is on an account associated with some other email address, please let us know and we’ll check that site.)

Next, please consider the bandwidth costs associated with high traffic. What is the size of the data transfer for the average page load?

Let’s say it is around 12 MBs (which is a very large page load size). If you have 10K page loads at 12 MBs a piece, the total bandwidth used will be 120 GB. The Starter plan only includes 100 GB per month. If you exceed the limit a bandwidth add-on will be automatically applied to keep the sites active (and there is no way to prevent this except not to use bandwidth). The bandwidth add-on is $55 per 100 GB. So, if you use 120 GB of bandwidth in a month, it would cost $55 for the month.

Now let’s say you get 40K views in a month:

12M * 40K = 480 GB

That would use 4 bandwidth add-ons and the monthly bill would be $55*4 which is $220. Please be prepared to pay for this bandwidth use if it occurs.

Note, adding Cloudflare as a proxy will not prevent those bandwidth charges unless Cloudflare caches the responses which it normally does not do. If Cloudflare makes requests to Netlify, then it will use your account’s bandwidth here and there is a charge for exceeding the plan limit (which again is 100 GB for Starter).

Also, other plans at Netlify include more bandwidth. For example, the Pro plan includes 1 TB of bandwidth (1000 GB) and it is only $19 per month.

In the worst case scenario this difference looks like this:

  • 1000 GB on Starter = 9 add-ons * $55 per add-on = $495 for the month
  • 1000 GB on Pro = 0 add-ons + $19 for Pro = $19 for the month

So, if you know for a fact in advance that you will exceed 100 GB of use, it is always more cost effective to upgrade to Pro in advance. Even for the smallest case of exceeding the limit, Pro is less expensive:

  • 101 GB on Starter = 1 add-ons * $55 per add-on = $55 for the month
  • 101 GB on Pro = 0 add-ons + $19 for Pro = $19 for the month

Again, if you consider it likely you will exceed the limits, upgrading to at least Pro is always more cost effective than staying on Starter.

There is another consideration. If this is a site about decentralized finance (crypto-currencies, NFTs, crypto monitors, or crypto exchanges) we strongly recommend talking to our account management team and (possibly and at your discretion) upgrading to an Enterprise plan with the High-Performance Edge Network add-on.

So, going back to the original question, if your site is mostly static assets (and yours are completely static assets which is ideal) our CDN can handle the load. However, for such high load you will always be best served by the Enterprise High-Performance Edge Network compare to the Standard Edge Network which is the default for all plan types. That High-Performance Edge Network add-on is only available for Enterprise plans. If you want to chat with our account management team about this, please let us know with a reply here (or a DM) and we’ll follow-up in DMs to coordinate how best for them to reach out to you.

If there are other questions about this, please let us know.