How much traffic can a single dedicated server handle?

Just wondering... I have a dedicated server plan with a good hosting company: high RAM, unlimited bandwidth, etc. How many unique visitors per day can a single dedicated server handle? When should you start thinking about a multiple-server set up?

 

You forgot to mention the vital information.

It can handle being Dugg and Slahdotted at the same time if you host only 500b static files.

It will drown, burn and crash on 10 visitors if you're like YouTube or offer full length film downloads out of a database.

In order to come with a useful answer you'd need to tell us:

- What's your bandwith - there's no such thing as unlimited
- What's your average file size
- How many hits on average would one page be?
- Will it be database driven and if so, how many queries per page request?
- What are the server specs?

 

Thanks for the reply---

I understand that I didn't provide specifics about my server and website, but I witheld that info for good reason. I'm just interested in average numbers.

Let's say its not a bandwidth-intensive site (it wont be streaming media or offering file downloads from the server). Also, it won't be taking up much hard drive space (Just a few MB). It will call a simple database. It will be getting alot of visitors.

So, the average dedicated server from the average dedicated server host- how many unique visitors per day?

 

Again, and at least:
- What's your average file size
- How many hits on average would one page be?
- Will it be database driven and if so, how many queries per page request?

 

Anything we mention won't mean a thing. It's speculation out of thin air. Without knowing facts any answer would be useless.

So, if it makes you feel better:

15 thousand uniques a day.

 

20 thousand here

 

Ok, let's say it's a one page website.
Simple graphics (15-50kb) jpgs and text are the only content on the server, and they appear on this one page website. The page calls a simple database in order to build a simple menu.

 

Is it getting any traffic now? Do an uptime and see how much load it's under. While it's not a perfect metric (and doesn't take into consideration bandwidth) it's probably the most concrete number you'll get.

Even if you answered everyone's questions here, it would be difficult for them to estimate the number of users within a reasonable amount.

 

I understand that my vagueness isn't helping, sorry. One last try-If I get 100k unique visitors in a day- could a single server handle that in theory, for a simple one page website or no?

 

I've had a low end server handle loads of 50+ hits a second (but it was really lagging). That's mostly traffic going out from the server. I've got a higher end server that will handily download 100,000 pages an hour - and likely a lot more than that if I didn't cap the application. I've had a forum similiar to DP (same software anyway) on what I would call a midrange server and it could handle almost 1000 simultaneous visitors without my doing any real tweaking.

I believe webmasterworld.com runs on one (maybe two?) servers.

In other words, you don't have anything to worry about with just about any old regular old server.

 

Thanks wheel for the info.