Dev Tools · 13h ago
How a Silent Kernel Bug Nearly Broke 1 Million Connections
A chat cluster hit 800K concurrent connections when connections silently vanished due to a full nf_conntrack table. The kernel dropped packets without logging to app metrics, requiring deep tuning of file descriptors, TCP buffers, and connection tracking. The team ultimately scaled to 1 million connections by treating the kernel as part of the application's failure surface.
Meridian48 take
The post is a valuable deep dive into Linux kernel tuning for high-scale systems, but its lessons are niche for engineers running similar infrastructure.
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How We Scaled to 1 Million Connections — and the Silent Kernel Bug That Almost Broke It →
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linux-kernel-tuninghigh-concurrency