[WEB400] Hit capacity of Classic HTTP Server and a module 170

["Bob Cozzi" <cozzi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,
This morning my little old 170 running IBM's Classic HTTP Server on OS/400
V4.5 "crashed".
The cause for this was due to extremely high volume of hits during a 2 hour
period.
When my free email newsletter went out last night and everybody on the east
coast got in this morning, the server started to get very, very busy. In
about a 90 minute period we had nearly 5,000 hits on the website. The entire
system slowed to a crawl and the webserver pages were effectively not being
served to the web users.
 
My theory is that too many server jobs were being started for the system
capacity and some CGI jobs where starting/ending so quickly with each hit
that the system just couldn't keep up.
Now I have been lobbying to upgrade to V5R1 and go to the Apache server but
haven't been able to get the hosting agent to do that yet (after all
RPGIV.com is a free site that produces no revenue).
So my question is, have others had this kind of thing happen on their
systems? 
Can the 400 handle 5,000+ to 10,000+ hits per hour on an entry-level
machine?
-Bob Cozzi