Cloudflare launches the waiting room function to manage peak traffic
Cloudflare, a well-known content distribution network provider in the United States, recently announced the launch of the waiting room function, which will be available to governments and medical institutions in advance.
The main function provided by the waiting room is queuing. When certain websites or services are visited too much, users can be placed in the waiting room to queue up and then gradually access.
The reason for launching this feature is that the company found that many websites have peak visits, such as registration functions of certain websites, concert ticket grabbing websites, and so on.
When the traffic is too high, it will not only cause the website server to be blocked but also cause more users to be unable to complete the operation, so the queuing function can relieve the pressure on the server.
When a user visits a highly-visited website or page, Cloudflare will queue the user in the waiting room, and only access the server when the user is queued.
When the user is still in the queue, the resource consumption is in the waiting room, so there is actually no access to the website server and the server resources will not be consumed.
This approach can directly alleviate the server pressure, which has a great optimization effect for certain websites that are frequently visited by users to avoid server downtime.
The company said that the number of visits to certain government websites and medical institutions affected by the epidemic has soared, which has led to frequent visits to these websites that cannot be alleviated for a long time.
Therefore, the waiting room function will be provided to government websites and medical institutions in advance. These institutions can use the waiting room only after simple configuration and deployment.
Currently supported governments and medical institutions only need to submit an application to the company, and after approval, they can open the latest waiting room function according to the service guidance process.
To activate, you need to submit the peak visit period of the website, the maximum number of concurrent users that can be supported during this period, the access limit per minute, and the operation timeout, etc.
It can be used after the configuration is completed. When the user visits, it will be automatically judged whether it can access the server. If it is a peak period, it may be placed in the waiting room.
The company said that it will expand the feature to more websites in the future, and if necessary, companies can activate this feature to slow down the visit pressure during peak periods.
