{"id":4833,"date":"2014-06-10T14:13:59","date_gmt":"2014-06-10T18:13:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/?p=4833"},"modified":"2016-02-23T18:15:07","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T22:15:07","slug":"performance-comic-ticketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/2014\/06\/performance-comic-ticketing\/","title":{"rendered":"Web Performance Load Tests Comic-Con Badges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019ve ever seen TV\u2019s <i>The Big Bang Theory<\/i>, then you\u2019ve seen the feeding frenzy that represents millions of comic book fanatics trying to buy 130,000 Comic-Con badges at the exact same time.\u00a0If not, do yourself a favor and watch this very funny scene:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Big Bang Theory guys try to get San Diego Comic con tickets.\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VWMR1ReDvZ8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>OK\u2026got the picture?<\/p>\n<p>In years past, the Comic-Con ticket site has frustrated would-be buyers with a number of crashes, error messages and missed opportunities. Not cool when you\u2019re competing against hordes of other fans and your entire comic book universe hangs in the balance.<\/p>\n<p>To keep everything running super smooth this year, Event Planning International Corporation (EPIC)\u2014the company that runs ticket sales\u2014called on Web Performance to load test the site and prepare for the enormous traffic spikes that define Comic-Con registration.<\/p>\n<p>And this time, they passed with flying colors.<\/p>\n<p><b>Refresh! Refresh! Refresh! Refresh!<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Comic-Con represents the worst-case scenario for any website. As the event\u2019s popularity grows, so does the load on its ticketing servers. This year, as many as 900,000 visitors competed for 130,000 tickets\u2014all at the exact same time.<\/p>\n<p>Normally, talk of 900,000 users is in the context of e-commerce. In most cases, only 0.1% of a site\u2019s visitors hit the &#8220;buy&#8221; button at any given time. Not so with Comic-Con. When the Buy Now light goes on, our heroes pounce in waves hundreds of thousands strong and counting. It\u2019s a website\u2019s version of the perfect storm. And it\u2019s an incredibly difficult situation to handle and test for.<\/p>\n<p>To generate the necessary number of virtual users, we had to configure Load Tester for 450 load-generating computers in the cloud dispersed all over the country.\u00a0Fortunately, since Load Tester automates configuration, we finished setup in about 15 minutes. However, the testing itself required several days of work to identify and fix configuration issues to ensure a fast, error-free experience for ticket buyers at every click.<\/p>\n<p>How fast? All 130,000 Comic-Con badges sold in just 90 minutes. As usual, some people came away empty-handed. That\u2019s the simple, sometimes heartbreaking mathematics of Comic-Con. However, every single visitor experienced fast response times with zero timeouts or errors, which is a testament to EPICs reliable ticket server\u2014and a testament to the power of Load Tester.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Comic-Con represents the worst-case scenario for any website. As the event\u2019s popularity grows, so does the load on its ticketing servers. This year, as many as 900,000 visitors competed for 130,000 tickets\u2014all at the exact same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,195],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-case-studies","category-load-testing-services"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4833"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5530,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833\/revisions\/5530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}