Voting databank problems

[genesis26]

Hi

in high traffic situations there seems to be a problem with the voting system.

Problem: votings are in an extra database table. (js_comments_votes)

Every IP Adress is registered for every vote.

NOW THE PROBLEM:

is it correct, that the system looks up the ip adress of every single new voter in order to avoid doulbevoting?

If so, it seems to be necessary the the ip adress column has to be indexed.

Otherwise this would result in a linear look up. If traffic is high an many people vote: database performance decreases until collaps - depending on the number of voters.

mmnews.de has Thousends of comments and Millions of votes. We have to empty the voting-table now every day in order to avoid databank problems.


SOLUTION

Eiter a cron that empties the table every day or after a certain amount of votings

or

an index on the ip-adress-column

[smart]

Does creating index on IP column solve the problem? I do not have huge data to test this solution... If you can make some tests with indexed column - please post here testing results? Will this affect to server's load?

Any way, in my mind your idea about table clearing is interesting... We could delete some items depends on their date (for example older than one week).This will still prevent double votes from one IP during one week and also will decrease server's load. 

I'll move this topic to Suggestions board...