The Solution

Okay, that example is somewhat contrived, but hey, it was fun to write and it’s based on fact. Don’t forget that WWW stands for World Wide Web and there are millions of people using it all day, every day. If you attract just infinitesimally tiny fraction of those people at the same time, you can expect an awful lot of visitors. Most web sites respond well when one or two people visit them, but have you ever tried simulating 100,000 visitors and then tried to look at your site? These sorts of things do happen, and most of the time people get caught out.

(Peter here: For example, I was consulting for a large company that sells various types of fluffy toys online. Now, I’m not entirely sure how you become a large company by selling fluffy toys but I guess they know something that I don’t! Anyway, the problem was that like most businesses they had busy and quiet periods. On average they would take around 2,000 orders per week. However, at certain times, such as Christmas and Valentine’s Day, their orders would go through the roof, often to 2,000 per day! When they were really busy, they were hitting five orders per second!)