How to cope with the surge of traffic?

Q: How can I cope with the sudden surge of traffic to the site?

A: First of all, I want to congratulate you, this can be said to be a happy trouble. It is likely that some of the latest products displayed on your site have attracted a lot of attention, leading to a sudden exponential increase in the number of visitors to your site, and then the problem is that 90 minutes later, your server crashes because it can't afford a sudden increase in traffic. This may mean that too many people want to buy your product online for a short period of time.

To prevent such a disaster, you can choose the content distribution Technology (CDN) provided by Akamai, Amazon, cdnetwork and other companies to accelerate the network, there are a lot of companies around the world to provide such services. This is a cloud based automatic extension service that optimizes the delivery of various types of content, most commonly in software and video content. With the help of CDN, customers can visit your website at will and not be restricted by the number of people online at the same time. They can quickly download content from your site, whether they're in the same city as you, or far away on the other side of the planet.

We found the senior director of Akamai's platform operations, Michael Kuperman, to give us a detailed description of the service, and he has considerable experience in the delivery of Web content.

Who needs to use CDN service?

If your customer base is in every corner of the world, or you can see when your site will encounter traffic bottleneck restrictions. For example, online Monday (Cyber Monday, the first day after the Thanksgiving holiday, often with internet shopping promotions) or Mother's Day, or a sudden increase in the number of visits due to your promotional policies, you will need to use CDN services at this time. You also need to use CDN services if you need to improve your page response speed to compete with your competitors in online shopping or hotel bookings. If you're worried about servers not responding or virtual attacks, you need to use CDN services as well.

Who does not need to use CDN service?

If your customer base is focused on a small local scale, then CDN may not be very useful to you. If your site's profitability doesn't depend on its performance, or if your viewers don't come from around the world and you don't advertise on Yahoo News, then a CDN is not very useful to you either.

How do I select a CDN provider?

If your site is for a distant market, for example, the Chinese market, you need to use the CDN service provider from China to improve the use of stability. You also need to know whether the CDN supports your program and can achieve your goals and requirements, and ask the CDN service providers if they are willing to test your programs and content in a point-to-point order.

How much is the cost of CDN service?

If your site is a video transfer site, you are likely to be asked to pay for the flow, which is divided into GBT (per GB) and Mbps (per megabyte). If your site is an online shopping site or an advertising program site, CDN Services may be charged according to the number of transactions and the amount of web browsing. Each time the data is transferred or the CDN used for each transaction is only a few cents, and the millions of traffic it brings you will make a lot of money out of it.

How long does it take for a CDN to go from purchase to formal use?

For a good CDN provider, it takes only a few minutes to start using CDN Services once a contract is signed with them. However, if your site offers overly complex applications and programs, this time may be extended to days or weeks, and they need to use this time to debug. If you are sure you want to use CDN services, I recommend that you give yourself at least 1 months to prepare, determine your needs within that time, and choose a CDN provider so that you can easily select and then make a good deal with your CDN provider. Lu Yun