Context:
I have a video game client that requests a php page from the server to process user logins. This happens in a loop (terrible) and is therefore making MANY requests, per client. I plan to fix this, but that is not the point of the question.
Before my server was a Dreamhost VPS. This server managed to handle all the game clients just fine, only spawning a single Apache process to handle the login.
I just moved to a digital ocean sever as I built a new website and the dreamhost server was always very slow for the price I was paying.
The new digital ocean server does NOT handle the game client logging in now. It spawns a new Apache process for each request, meaning a single user launching the game will bring the server to it's knees, spawning hundreds of Apache processes until the login request is handled.
Question:
I would like to know if there is an Apache configuration change I can make that will limit the processes spawned from the game clients requests. I am patching the game, but I can't be sure every user will update. I have got myself in a pickle. Bonus points if the change helps fights DDoS attacks!
The server is running Ubuntu, using Digital oceans 'Wordpress' image. It has 1 GB ram and I setup a 4 GB swap file to prevent the site from crashing. A slow site is better than a dead site! I have trying enabling caching at the Apache level, but I don't know what I am doing and nothing I have done has had any affect.