Why is it important to be ready for peak traffic on the server? Causes and effect on user metrics
Every business wishes that its content and product are viewed by as many people as possible. The surge in online traffic is a dream for all website managers as more traffic directly means more customers and higher sales. But as absurd as it may sound, too much success can be harmful to you. Peaks in online traffic can cause websites or apps to slow down and eventually crash if you do not take proactive steps to address website or app performance.
Overloading a web server is a problem that most organisations face, even those with extensive experience dealing with server-side issues. An overload, on the other hand, can be especially disruptive for a company that is new to diagnosing and responding to server problems, costing visitors, revenue, and reputation. There are multiple reasons why the server would be overworked-
- Unexpected rise in Traffic
When many people make attempts to access your website at one particular time, your server may face an overload. It happens a lot of times with concert sales or flash sales. Spikes can be for a short span of time but can affect your business poorly. - Failure of one or more server
It is normal for backup servers to be overburdened in case one or more servers are down because of sudden malfunction or maintenance. - Computer Viruses
If your computers are infected with viruses or worms, abnormal high traffic is witnessed affecting server’s operations. - DoS and DDoS attacks
Denial-of-service attacks, also known as distributed-denial-of-service attacks, are launched by hackers with the goal of making a server unavailable to its intended users. Hackers crash the server by flooding it with false requests, causing it to deny legitimate requests.
While these were the reasons why a server is overloaded, there are multiple indicators of how your site reacts when under too much load.
- Error codes are visible. Your server displays an HTTP error code, such as 408, 500, 504, 502, 503, etc.
- Delaying serving requests. Requests from the servers are delayed and the website takes time to load.
- Resetting or denying TCP connections. Your server resets or completely denies your TCP connection and it becomes annoying for the user.
- Delivering Partial content. Many times your website gets bugged and only a partial amount of your webpage is loaded.
- Poor quality- Higher server load directly affects the quality of content served to your audience in a poor sense.
Video streaming is a complex task. A video stream, like network traffic, has latency (loading/seeking time) and throughput (bitrate). It does, however, have a target speed (frame rate), two different size dimensions (bitrate and resolution), variable sizing when doing adaptive bitrate streaming, and subjective elements such as audio and video quality. They optimise routing, forecast delivery times, and so on. And it turns out that the location information is incorrect. The truck arrives later, disrupting the distribution center’s normal workflow. Not to mention routing recommendations that proved ineffective.
Metrics have become extremly crucial as they replicate the requirements and and help in enhancing the performance. Metrics are the given scale and help to judge the quality and help businesses along with individuals understand what should they chase. While the standard of work may change from one industry to another but in order to set those standards, Metrics are important.
When setting standards for metrics in a particular value, primary thing to focus on is end requirements and the addition of value it happens for them. This lesson is especially important for business leaders.
So looking at how poor quality of video affects users metrics for a page-
- Traffic
People viewing your content would not stay for a long period if the quality is not up to the mark. Traffic is the most important metric and it affect everything either directly or indirectly. The sudden drop in traffic is recorded by search engines and which is not good for the future of content. - SERP rating
Search Engine Results page is what SERP stands for. With traffic reducing at your page ratings for your website also start falling. While SERP is very difficult to measure, it is the easiest indicator as to how is your content performing. - Time spent on site
The users tend to get annoyed really quickly with poor quality of content and they leave it in no time. It does not just speak volume for quality of content but also a metric for how your audience is perceiving your content. It represents the likeability of your content. - Returning Visitors
While you are witnessing a surge in a new audience, it is really important to tap them as for a business to sustain losing audience is really note feasible. Witnessing poor quality of work is surely not going to bring them back which can put all your hard work in vain. No business, in the long run, can get a new audience every time and thus returning visitors become really crucial. - Social Sharing
In this digital world, people love to share feedback. People follow people’s recommendations and this is how most of the content and businesses work. In case of poor quality, people spread negative feedback which is never good for any business.
These are few user metrics that are deeply affected by the poor quality of content. For any website, it is really important that they keep a check on these factors. It is very important that you are ready for any kind of upsurge that your website may witness. The digital world is full of options and very few are lucky to get viral and witness an upsurge of audience but if you fail to capitalise on that golden opportunity, it might not return again so it advised to be ready .
How Mogi’s Multi-CDN handles peak traffic Issues
Mogi’s patented tech, Mogi Streaming Engine, basically implements a multi-cdn solution which chooses the best CDN for delivering every content.The Mogi Streaming Engine basically jumps between CDN’s based on performance, cost and latency, both on a user level and on a client level. This enable the best experience for your customers and along with it you get a highly compressed output with the same or higher quality. This means not only your contractual pricing is low due to competitive pricing, your bandwidth consumption reduces, and user experiences increases multifold. It’s a win win for all of us (Users, Clients, Mogi).
Mogi’s solutions are available end-to-end (Video Transcoding + Video Player + Mogi Streaming Engine (Multi-CDN delivery) + DRM + Video Analytics) or you can use individual products from the entire suite like just the Video Transcoding. Mogi also provides white label end-to-end plug n play solutions for OTT and EdTech Platforms, with Web, Android and iOS apps as well as a dedicated CMS for OTT and LMS for EdTech. The transcoding architecture’s result includes a highly compressed video of up to 50% with no loss in quality, and if you choose quality enhancement, a 40% compression with enhanced video quality, available in multiple bitrates.
If you want to partner with us and access our products, reach out to susheel.srinivas@mogiio.com