The Dragon Go Server (DGS) is a free-to-end-user facility, that is kindly hosted by our provider Samuraj Data AB in Sweden. In order to make the best use of all the resources, it is important that DGS players act responsibly.
 
Viewing a page on DGS blocks some of the resources the server can provide at any one time. That means, there is a limit of how many parallel requests the server can answer within a certain timeframe.
Since DGS was founded in 2001 many new users joined the server, and there are currently 2000-3000 unique users each day.
 
To prevent excessive usage of the server there are two features in place:

• A user access quota monitors the number of hits by a user. If the quota is reached the account will be blocked for some time (usually a day). A warning will be shown on the web-site shortly before the quota is exceeded.
   
  
• The access quota is NOT applied to the RSS-channel, the quick-status page, the WAP-channel and SGF-download.
  For the alternative interfaces (RSS-/WAP-channel and quick-status), a monitor is in place, that returns an error on excessive usage.
  

DGS is not a real-time server, so it is not expected that you access pages or make requests too often. Every additional request to the server takes away resources from others.
 
As a guideline:

• Use mail-notification to inform yourself about updates (done twice per hour) instead of the other possibilities.
  
• Avoid auto-refresh of DGS pages. It decreases the available access quota.
  
• If you use auto-refresh or a regular request for RSS/WAP or quick-status be sure to disable it when you do not need it.
  It's a good thing, when your RSS-reader or DGS-notification client allow to configure it when and how often they poll the server.
  
• More details about how to use RSS, WAP, quick-status, quick-play and SGF-download can be found in the FAQ-entry: Request limitations of alternative interfaces
  

Currently DGS has an average of 1 Mio page-hits per day. As an extreme example, let's assume 2000 players all use RSS for the whole day asking every 5 secs. That would be 2000 users * 17200 requests/day = 3.4 Mio RSS-requests ONLY for that. The vast majority of results would be without updates. These would be wasted requests that have needlessly used server resources.
 
It is the responsibility of all of us to choose wisely to ensure DGS remains an enjoyable place for everyone.