If you keep up with my blog, you would know that I’m a regular at Digg.com. A social networking website and if you are familiar with Digg, then you should be familiar with the “Digg effect“. The Digg effect is term coined to mean the amount of digg users to visit your website to causing a server downtime.

Definition of the Digg Effect:
“Digg has grown large enough that submissions sometimes create a sudden increase of traffic to the “dugg” website. This is referred to by some Digg users as the “Digg effect” and by some others as the site being “dugg to death“. However, in many cases stories are linked simultaneously on several popular bookmarking sites. In such cases, the impact of the “digg effect” is difficult to isolate and assess.”

The Experiment
Out of curiosity, I decided to setup an experiment to see my University’s servers at Stony Brook have the bandwidth to withstand the force of the “digg effect“. The web page being used for this experiment is my personal homepage on the university student sites.

My Hypothesis
I believe that servers at a University such as Stony Brook University should be able to handle a sudden increase in traffic such experienced in a digg effect.

http://digg.com/design/Can_University_Servers_Stand_the_Digg_Effect…

I hope that this will be an successful experiment and that users of the Digg community will participate. I’m very excited to see the outcome of this!

BTW: This is my Stony Brook student page.