Jakarta, July 4th, 2023 – The online concert ticket sales phenomenon poses a significant challenge for the platforms providing such services, as high traffic surges often lead to website disruptions or downtime, impacting the satisfaction of users waiting eagerly to purchase these tickets.
A prime example is the concert ticket sales of the world-renowned band Coldplay, where a queue of 1.5 million people was reported in line to get their hands on the concert tickets to a limited 60,000 tickets allocated for the upcoming November 15th, 2023.
“The waiting room is full. There are more than 500,000 users waiting in front of you. Please wait and try again after a few moments,” reads the notification on the website.
Although many fans were unable to secure tickets, the war ticket system used for the Coldplay concert, employed a waiting room system (with the assistance of Cloudflare Waiting Room feature). This has garnered much praise as the ticket sales server continued to function effectively even under the siege of hundreds of thousands of simultaneous visitors.
The utilization of the waiting room system definitely serves as an example for other platforms seeking to implement online ticket booking systems, especially in this post-pandemic era where there is a resurgence in the music and concert industry. As the digitization of ticket booking evolves rapidly at an unforeseen rate, the caveat is that it must continue to provide satisfactory service to users.
What is Cloudflare Waiting Room?
IT observer and Product Owner of Primary Guard, Razin Umran, explained that Cloudflare Waiting Room is a feature provided by Cloudflare that functions as a queueing service for a website. This enables the website to serve users according to its capacity.
“By utilizing this feature, we can determine the maximum number of users that can access the website simultaneously. If the limit is exceeded, other users will be directed to a virtual waiting room. This ensures that the website does not experience failure or downtime,” said Razin.
Every website has its own capacity based on its infrastructure, such as memory capacity, storage, and network capabilities. In certain cases, when a website capacity is not properly measured during publishing can lead to the website becoming overloaded when a sudden influx of visitors landed on the page at any given time. Cloudflare Waiting Room can detect the number of users accessing a website and when the number exceeds the predetermined limit, Cloudflare redirects other users to a virtual waiting room until it is their turn to enter the website.
“With this feature, the website can continue to serve users without any interruptions, ultimately improving brand reputation and commercial aspects of the business,” explained Razin.
Which Services Can Use Cloudflare Waiting Room?
Furthermore, Razin also elaborated on how Cloudflare Waiting Room can be applied to any web application-based service. While it can be configured for any page on a website, its usage is optimal when implemented for websites or specific pages involving transactions and expected to be accessed by a large number of users.
This service has been implemented not only for concerts but also by various organizations and companies worldwide. For instance, the Ministry of Health in Latvia utilized Cloudflare Waiting Room for the registration of COVID-19 vaccines for its citizens.
Additionally, Luma Health, a healthcare platform that collaborates with over 500 healthcare facilities in the United States, integrated Cloudflare Waiting Room within less than 72 hours. Thanks to Cloudflare Waiting Room, over 1.5 million vaccines have been scheduled for distribution.
What About User Data Security?
Razin clarified that Cloudflare Waiting Room merely redirects users to a virtual waiting room. Therefore, no data is transmitted to Cloudflare because the mechanism of this feature only requires the use of cookies on the browser to manage the queuing mechanism in Cloudflare Waiting Room.
As an Official Partner of Cloudflare, Primary Guard has assisted numerous companies and organizations, ranging from government entities to private enterprises, in securing their web applications from cyber-attacks. Primary Guard also offers consultation services to clients before they implement Cloudflare.
Interested to know more on how Primary Guard may assists in enhancing your organisation’s cyber security measures? Visit primaryguard.com or send us an email at [email protected] to speak to our sales representative.
About Primary Guard
Primary Guard is a leading Malaysian-based cybersecurity company, specializing in delivering B2B cybersecurity solutions to businesses, working extensively with multiple organisations across Malaysia and Indonesia, offering our best specialist in the cybersecurity industry and dedications to each implementation and project. Our dedication has transformed client’s organisations; minimising cybersecurity risks and threats within the organisation or externally, resulting in optimised business efficiency and undisrupted day-to-day processes for an organisation’s operation ecosystem.