Wow. As of 1:00pm EST my browser is not even sitting and trying to load... The connection immediately times out.
Perhaps they realized that the site had become unusable and have pulled the plug to try to reduce the load while implementing a fix?
I've never had to do it but I should imagine that a local reverse proxy cache should be able to be setup pretty quickly... That would definitely help them with their main pages (products etc..) and leave their servers free to deal with requests pertaining to making and placing orders.
This is all assuming that their server-side code already outputs the correct cache control headers of course...
It would appear that I was partly correct. The site is back up now and performing much, much better from what I have seen. Free Day is officially over though (apparently they gave away the whole $100k!) so perhaps the load they're seeing is now just drastically reduced...
Perhaps they realized that the site had become unusable and have pulled the plug to try to reduce the load while implementing a fix?
I've never had to do it but I should imagine that a local reverse proxy cache should be able to be setup pretty quickly... That would definitely help them with their main pages (products etc..) and leave their servers free to deal with requests pertaining to making and placing orders.
This is all assuming that their server-side code already outputs the correct cache control headers of course...