Handling Traffic

In an earlier blog entry I described ACM's imaginative way to handle web site downtime. Today I noticed that the web site of the Berlin Philharmonic uses an equally imaginative (and low-tech) way to handle excessive web traffic.

The ticket ordering link presumably switches from static web pages to dynamic content. When the web site is unable to handle the traffic, visitors are redirected to a virtual "waiting room", featuring a countdown counter, and are asked to wait there until the counter expires. This feature can presumably throttle traffic to the rate that the server can handle.

I never got access to a ticket ordering page, so either the web site is extremely crowded, or there it is down and the waiting room page appears instead of an error message. Nevertheless, the waiting room idea is a cheap way to handle traffic surges.

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