Search System Load Detection via Cache Hit Ratio Analysis
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Solution Overview
Problem
Search systems face significant costs and performance issues due to illegitimate load, particularly Denial Of Service (DOS) attacks, which generate artificially high traffic, making it difficult to distinguish between natural and artificial high traffic events.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that includes a load monitoring component to detect abnormal loads and an analysis component to determine if the load is artificial, using cache hit ratio analysis and traffic patterns to differentiate between natural and synthetic traffic.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If search systems build capacity to exceed expected legitimate load, then system performance and reliability are improved, but system cost and complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary analysis of load patterns by monitoring cache hit ratios and traffic characteristics before fully committing to high-capacity infrastructure. This allows the system to prepare detection mechanisms and throttling policies in advance, avoiding the need to over-build capacity while still maintaining reliability during legitimate high-demand periods.
Solution Approach 2:
The system continuously monitors cache hit ratios, traffic patterns, and load characteristics to provide feedback on whether high traffic is legitimate or malicious. This feedback loop enables dynamic adjustment of system response, allowing the system to maintain appropriate capacity levels based on real-time conditions rather than relying on static over-provisioning.
2Productivity
If search systems handle high traffic volume, then user service quality is improved, but illegitimate load causes performance degradation and increased costs
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts and isolates illegitimate traffic patterns from legitimate traffic by analyzing cache hit ratios and traffic characteristics. Once identified, the harmful load is separated and handled differently through throttling or blocking, allowing the system to maintain high productivity for legitimate users while eliminating the performance degradation caused by malicious traffic.
Solution Approach 2:
The system introduces an intermediary analysis layer that sits between traffic ingestion and processing. This intermediary component monitors cache hit ratios and traffic patterns to identify illegitimate load, acting as a mediator that protects the core search system from harmful factors while maintaining service quality for legitimate users.
3Reliability
If search systems access large index for every query, then search completeness is improved, but computation expense and time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies different quality levels of search processing to different traffic types. For legitimate traffic, the system provides complete search results by accessing the large index. For illegitimate traffic identified through pattern analysis, the system applies local quality filtering by throttling or blocking, avoiding the computation expense of complete index access while maintaining search completeness for genuine users.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method are provided for detecting artificially generated load on a search system. The system may include a load monitoring component for monitoring a current load for comparison with an expected load. The system may additionally include an abnormality detection component for detecting an abnormality when the monitored load exceeds an expected amount by a predetermined threshold. The system may further include an analysis component for determining if the monitored load is an artificial load.