Today we encountered a problem on the server, when files/scripts took more that 3 seconds to load. The solution was simple - just increasing MaxClients to the estimated memory limit. But I am worried about scalability of that solution and it doesn't seems too reliable — should load increase slightly problem will occur again.

The nature of the webservice we are developing — small online game — requires us to embed AJAX mechanism which sends a beacon each 15 seconds indicating that client is online.

Let us imagine following setup. Apache 2 (mpm\_prefork), MaxClients = 150, KeepAlive = on, KeepAliveTimeout = 5. There are 300 users online. Do I understand it correct — if all 300 users will send a beacon simultaneously (just by retrieving beacon.php script using POST) — first 150 clients will get an answer almost momentarily while other 150 will have to wait for 5 seconds before they get an answer?

And second question. What is the best solution in my case? Disabling keep alive at all?