Managing Traffic During Peak Demand; Plus, Microsoft, Akamai Outages

During high-traffic seasons like Black Friday or a much-anticipated product launch, maintaining good digital experiences for customers is vital. We’ve all heard tales of floods of eager shoppers crashing a website during a major sale—leaving them unable to make their coveted purchases. To guard against a breakdown like this during high-traffic periods, companies sometimes use various traffic management strategies such as digital waiting rooms. In this episode, The Internet Report team discusses the pros and cons of traffic management and looks at the different techniques used by ticketing platforms for the upcoming Oasis reunion tour concerts. They also cover an AT&T issue that impacted Microsoft, as well as disruptions at Akamai, Alibaba Cloud, and Cloudflare. Listen to the full episode now or use the chapters below to skip to the sections that most interest you. CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 00:54 Oasis Reunion Ticket Issues 10:16 Microsoft Outage 13:00 Akamai Outage 14:40 Alibaba Cloud Outage 16:28 Cloudflare Incident 17:40 Outage Trends: By the Numbers 18:40 Get in Touch ——— For more insights, check out The Internet Report blog: https://www.thousandeyes.com/blog/internet-report-traffic-management-microsoft-outage?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=na_fy25q1_internetreport_q1fy25ep4_podcast ——— Want to get in touch? If you have questions, feedback, or guests you would like to see featured on the show, send us a note at InternetReport@thousandeyes.com. Or follow us on X: @thousandeyes ——— ABOUT THE INTERNET REPORT This is The Internet Report, a podcast uncovering what’s working and what’s breaking on the Internet—and why. Tune in to hear ThousandEyes’ Internet experts dig into some of the most interesting outage events from the past couple weeks, discussing what went awry—was it the Internet, or an application issue? Plus, learn about the latest trends in ISP outages, cloud network outages, collaboration network outages, and more. Catch all the episodes on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-internet-report/id1506984526 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5ADFvqAtgsbYwk4JiZFqHQ?si=00e9c4b53aff4d08&nd=1&dlsi=eab65c9ea39d4773 - SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/ciscopodcastnetwork/sets/the-internet-report