Last Friday, i attended a presentation by the meebo.com crew where they explained their challenge and how their tackled it. I enjoyed their agile approach and the challenge they had to solve – how to make a synchronous web app that handles thousands of users without bringing down the server.
Scalability is an old story, but meebo.com’s challenge was different. They needed to scale in ways that asynchronous web apps (facebook, myspace, twitter etc.) do not.
- They use the long-polling technique that results in the web server maintaining thousands of open connections with each user and that has significant affects on the server.
- They have a single gaim instant messenger process per user to allow the user to connect to MSN Chat, Google Chat, etc. and this had other effects (and significant benefits).
- They initially used Apache and it had some affects.
It was clearly a fun challenge to have and as their user numbers ramped up, they followed a streamlined and effective approach that resulted in a lean, fit for purpose and extensible app. A great success story.
