this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Lemmy

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Hypothetically, if all lemmy users were on instances of a very small number (< 20), would this be better or worse for scaling? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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And I guess this question is two parts: 1. Regarding the current lemmy implementation, and 2. The activityPub protocol in general

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Speaking of scale only, bigger instances are certainly better. More and smaller instances increase the coordination overhead significantly (remember that your instance saves and serves a copy of any remote post. In the extreme case this means every server needs to have a copy of all other servers. Also, the more instances, the more peers each server has to ask for an update.

Many small instances have other benefits though, among them higher resillience and independence.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

At the same time, don't smaller instances mean that they generally are making less copies of remote posts? Fewer users means that they'll only be subscribed / viewing a few posts.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Still, all posts of any subscribed-to community (and any of their votes, which is the biggest issue atm) need to be pushed to yet another instance. IIRC this is how a feed works.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I believe in the fediverse updates are almost always sent, not requested