ELI5: What is a "Server Load"?
ELI5: What is a "Server Load"?
I've heard of this concept multiple times throughout my time on the internet, but I never understood what causes a "server load". Now that I'm in one of the biggest instances on Lemmy, this is one of the significant issues that we face. So what is a "server load", why does it slow down websites instead of stopping them? Does the load on a server increase by the amount of information in it, the browsing of information, or both? Does upvoting and downvoting cause a load too? Does saving posts and comments to your profile also cause a server load?
It's like a queue at the checkout of a grocery store: the server is the grocery store clerk, and the load is the people in the queue.
Some people in the queue only buy one thing and it doesn't cause much wait time for the others in the queue, while others buy a lot and slow the queue down.
Bigger websites are run like bigger grocery stores and have more checkouts to serve more people at a time.