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Historically, Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) have been laser-focused on performance metrics and ensuring systems are always up and running. While uptime remains critical, the scope of SRE responsibilities is expanding. Modern users demand more than just accessibility and speed; they want a seamless and delightful experience. This shift underscores the need for SREs to think holistically about customer experience.

Prioritizing customer experience: expanding the SRE mission

In the world of SREs, the core mission has always been clear: ensure systems are reliable, scalable, and available. SREs have relentlessly pursued the challenge of "five nines" (99.999% uptime), and their dedication to system resilience is unwavering. However, as the digital landscape evolves, there's a growing realization that reliability alone isn't enough. 

, site reliability engineering should not just focus narrowly on metrics and percentages. More importantly, it involves defining reliability from the customer's point of view and letting their experience guide data-informed decisions. During the podcast, Google’s Nathen Harvey indicated, “We have to take a customer–or user-centric point of view of our systems.”

” and must advocate for the customer or end-user. Enter a new imperative beyond the 

Customer experience impacts every SRE should know

When you consider the four golden signals - latency, traffic, errors, and saturation - they can all have an impact on the user experience. Traditionally, SREs are not hesitant about questioning the why and understanding natural correlations. So while running things efficiently has a direct correlation to revenue, another key factor is the 

. Let’s run through key components of the customer experience and SREs’ role.

 Customer experience directly influences a company's reputation. When digital services not only perform reliably but also provide a smooth and user-friendly experience, users are more likely to view the company favorably. By the same token, when these services are not reliable, customers are extremely displeased, which can be seen  when customers tried to buy 

 or popular streaming platforms can experience downtime. SREs are monitoring issues, traffic, and latency to ensure this positive experience.

 Exceptional customer experiences foster 

. Users who enjoy a seamless experience are more likely to remain loyal, contributing to long-term business success. A customer experience study revealed that nearly 

 will take their business elsewhere following a negative interaction. This means if the site crashes or responses are slow, customers will take their business elsewhere. SREs can continually monitor metrics and tweak the infrastructure with 

 and other tools to deliver a better experience.

Customer satisfaction translates to business success. Users who have a positive experience are more likely to engage with a platform, leading to higher revenue generation. SREs can prepare for busy periods and understand the customer journey to help ensure satisfaction.

SREs can play a proactive role in identifying potential customer experience issues. By monitoring not only uptime but also performance metrics, they can spot degradations in service quality before users are significantly affected.

 (like what are they clicking on the most or getting caught up in) and when promotions or other events will make the traffic peak.

 SREs is how fast and operational checkout is - because that is how the business makes revenue. 

 is an important phase in the customer journey. No one likes it when items disappear from their cart or the wheel of wait time spins continuously after you hit purchase.

To prioritize customer experience effectively, SREs must embark on a journey into the world of the end-users. This journey encompasses every facet of a user's interaction with a service. Each touchpoint, from the first interaction to ongoing usage and support, shapes the user's perception of the service.

 stands tall among the pillars of customer experience. Users today expect lightning-fast responses from websites and apps. Slow-loading pages or apps with glitches can quickly drive users away. Let’s explore ways SREs can improve customer experiences in their day-to-day tasks.

Strategies for SREs to enhance customer experience

To consider customer experience as an SRE, here are some strategies to implement:

 Continuously monitor and optimize system performance. Pay attention to response times, error rates, and the overall user interface. Since SREs are concerned and measured on latency, this becomes a way to deliver faster speeds.

 Implement user-centric monitoring to gain insights into how real users experience your services. This includes tracking user interactions, load times, and user satisfaction rather than a whole focus on internal performance metrics.

 When incidents occur, assess their impact on users' experiences. Prioritize incident resolution based on potential customer impact.

 Foster collaboration between SREs and User Experience (UX) or User Interface (UI) teams. Aligning technical performance with user-centered design is essential to creating an experience fabricated around customer delight.

 Incorporate user feedback into your monitoring and improvement processes. Users often provide valuable insights into pain points.

 Plan infrastructure capacity and test load handling to manage usage spikes and prevent outages especially during peak events.

 Analyze site visitors to differentiate human customers from 

 and prioritize optimization for real user experiences and stop wasting resources on bad bot traffic and prevent them from creating havoc.

Exceptional customer experience is a collaborative effort. SREs, developers, designers, and other teams must work hand in hand. Building and maintaining systems that not only function but also provide an enjoyable and efficient experience is a shared responsibility.

In closing, the role of Site Reliability Engineers is evolving. While unwavering reliability and availability remain paramount, the contemporary digital landscape demands more. By actively monitoring and 

, empathizing with the user journey, and fostering collaboration across teams, SREs can make a substantial difference.

Their contribution goes beyond keeping systems running; it's about ensuring that users have a remarkable experience. Balancing reliability and 

 is the path to thriving in a competitive digital realm. So, to all SREs out there, remember: your mission is not just to keep the lights on; it's to ensure those lights shine brilliantly.

AI-powered services go beyond typical SRE tools 

Backend and application improvements can take months or even years to accomplish and may require significant resources - human, time, space, or budgets - that are not readily available. At the same time, customer expectations continue to increase and some changes may be necessary to stay ahead of the competition. With Macrometa, you can implement 

 in 60 days or less without changing your existing systems.

: This intelligent caching proxy dramatically accelerates website speed - boosting HTML, CSS, and JS delivery by up to 300% - without any loss in quality.

: This innovative solution optimizes JavaScript by consolidating all tags into simplified edge-side code, significantly speeding up script loading and execution.

: This capability effectively manages sudden traffic spikes by queuing incoming requests, ensuring fast, reliable performance even when sites see dramatic surges in visitors.

: This service prerenders and serves full web pages at the edge to users and crawlers alike, slashing latency and boosting SEO.

: This privacy-first system enables more contextual site experiences by recognizing visitors across devices without requiring invasive tracking across sites or sign-ins.

To learn more about PhotonIQ services and how they can meet SREs’ unique goals, be sure to chat with an 

Why SREs Need To Consider Customer Experiences

, “State of the Internet / Security: Pirates in the Outfield,” published in January 2022.

Before we dive into the report, let’s talk about 

 and why they are both on the rise. Even post-pandemic, people spend a lot of time watching or listening to content on personal devices or TVs - 

 predicts Americans will spend 186 minutes a day video streaming on devices and 131 minutes a day watching TV in 2026. This marks a 17.25% increase for streaming, and 17.6% decrease for TV compared to 2022.

 continues to rise as viewers increasingly prefer the convenience, personalization, variety, affordability, and flexibility it provides over traditional television viewing. The growth in devices that enable easy on-demand access to streaming platforms anywhere  - like 

Piracy stats: an insatiable appetite for illegally viewed content

There were 215 billion visits to piracy websites globally in 2022, an 18% increase from 2021 according to a 

. The United States had the highest demand for pirated film and TV content, with over 13.5 billion visits to piracy sites.

What is particularly interesting is that a 

 across 10 countries and involving over 6,000 sports fans revealed that even though 89% of respondents have paid subscriptions to watch live sports, 51% continue to use illegal streaming sites and services to view sporting events every month. 

 who use illegal streaming services do so because they think legal options are too costly. Companies can try to offer different priced viewing options to deter piracy but there are other ways to safeguard their content which we will explore from the Akamai paper.

Widespread piracy: the jarring global scope

Pirating is not a small issue, or limited to one region. According to data from MUSO in the Akamai report, there were 3.7 billion instances of consumers accessing pirated content globally between January and September 2021. The data shows that most consumers - 61.5% - directly visited sites hosting pirated materials, while 28.6% used search engines to find pirated content. Television saw the highest amount of piracy with over 67 billion total visits, followed by publishing and films.

The State of the Internet/Security Akamai report focuses on media piracy, examining it from economic, technological, and scale perspectives. Akamai has long studied piracy's impact on businesses. Key lessons are that piracy is a growing security concern and business issue rather than just a cost of doing business, while also generating profits for criminals. Akamai partnered with MUSO for data and insights across industries like streaming, software, and publishing. Together they analyze piracy trends in sports, TV, film, and more. The report aims to provide visibility into the piracy landscape and help media companies protect and value their digital content.

The report detailed how the entertainment industry has benefited from video streaming, especially during COVID-19 lockdowns. However, streaming has also blurred the line between piracy and consumption. Some perceive downloading or re-streaming content as harmless since the original remains, forgetting these acts cost millions to produce and impact livelihoods.

In 2019, US creative industries provided $229B economic benefit and 2.6M jobs per the 

U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center

, but piracy causes $29B in lost revenue annually. Less revenue means less incentive to develop new content, ultimately hurting producers, athletes, workers, and fans. While some pirates don't care and profit off re-streaming or mirror legitimate sites but charge fees or show a page full of ads, piracy harms the entire production ecosystem. Streaming made entertainment accessible but enabling piracy risks creative industry jobs and output.

The report listed how pirates employ various tactics to illegally access and distribute content. Three common piracy approaches are:

Link sharing and token harvesting - Pirate apps access events using stolen or reused access tokens, and monetize the content with their own ads.

Stream ripping and re-streaming - Pirates will broadcast events on public social platforms like Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook.

VPN/proxy services - Pirates and users leverage VPNs or proxies to bypass geographic restrictions and access content.

What they're watching: top pirated titles

Sometimes seeing content that you or your family and friends may have watched can show just how widespread the problem with piracy is across the globe. Let’s take a look at 2022 and 2021.

 indicated “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was at 21% percent, “The Batman” was at 13%, and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” made up 10% of piracy demand for films in 2022. “Thor Love and Thunder”, “Black Adam”, “Uncharted, Eternals”, “Top Gun Maverick”, “Jurassic World Domination”, and “Encanto” each made up less than 10% of the demand in that top 10 list.

The Akamai report showed 1. “Godzilla vs. Kong” 2. “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” 3. “Black Widow” 4. “F9” 5. “Mortal Kombat” (2021) 6. “The Suicide Squad” (2021) 7. “Cruella” 8. “Wonder Woman 1984” 9. “Raya and the Last Dragon” 10. “Jungle Cruise” as the most pirated films from January 2021- September 2021 based on the MUSO research.

Piracy in action: case studies from live events

During a 2020 live event in southern Asia, pirates employed various techniques to try to illegally access and distribute the event's stream. Methods included user-agent spoofing, rebroadcasting on social platforms like Twitch and YouTube, reusing access tokens, and modifying apps to bypass protections.

Akamai's Media Center Protector (MCP) combined with other Akamai services detected these piracy attempts, bringing piracy levels down from 40% to 15% during the event. However, pirates persisted with new tactics like DDoS attacks to trigger failover events.

This led to a Zero Trust approach, presuming all clients compromised until validated. In total, billions of requests were blocked or mitigated during the event. Combating piracy requires constant vigilance and balancing legitimate access with attack prevention.

During a July 2021 single-day US sporting event, pirates used various techniques to illegally access the live broadcast. Analysis of over 18 million records showed 4 million suspect instances, including thousands of VPN addresses, over 34,000 shared tokens, and 292,000 unique user-agents. The top shared token was reused over 19,000 times. Popular but open-source video players like Kodi were observed hundreds of thousands of times, often modified by pirates for illegal streaming. There were 39 suspect referral domains representing over 65% of suspicious traffic. Despite occurring in just hours, the event saw extensive piracy attempts through credential sharing, modified open-source software, and suspect referral links. Constant vigilance is required to combat the evolving methods pirates employ to illegally access high-value live content.

By the numbers: piracy statistics by industry

MUSO data shows the overwhelming majority of piracy is via direct site access rather than searching. From Jan-Sep 2021, there were 82B visits to piracy sites for just TV and film. Combined with music, software, publishing the total reaches 132B visits. Top countries are the US, Russia, India, China, and Brazil.

By industry, TV sees 67B visits and is the top pirated content. Publishing is next with 30B visits, followed by film at 14.5B. Music has 10.8B visits and software 9B. For TV, top sources are US, Russia and China. Publishing piracy is led by US, Japan and Russia. Film's top source is India then Turkey and US. Music piracy comes primarily from India, Iran and US. Software sees most piracy in China, Russia and US.

The massive visit totals across industries shows the large scale of piracy worldwide. Direct access to pirate sites dominates, signaling a need for consumer awareness and site blocking.

Key takeaways: highlights from the report

The recent Akamai report sheds light on the persistent issue of widespread media piracy globally, including the methods pirates use and how media companies can implement defenses. Here are some key highlights from the report or view the 

 to learn more about Akamai’s research and solutions to thwart content piracy.

Global piracy demand exceeded 3 billion visits in the first 3 quarters of 2021, showing a huge public appetite for streaming content through illegal means.

Many pirates also pay for legal streaming services, turning to piracy when content is unavailable through legal means.

Piracy is a full-time criminal enterprise, while defending against it is a constant struggle for legal broadcasters and streamers who lack visibility into threats.

Criminals exploit workflow and API vulnerabilities, and use multiple methods, requiring layered defenses.

With the visibility and protections in place, media companies can curb piracy. But it remains an ongoing battle as criminals constantly adapt to find new ways to illegally access coveted content.

Add another layer of protection against piracy with Macrometa

curb piracy for OTT video streaming services

 exclusive content to specific geographical regions. This enhances compliance with licensing agreements.

Revoke access for compromised credentials

Macrometa enables immediate invalidation of any compromised user tokens. This promptly cuts off unauthorized access to protected content. By leveraging Macrometa's seamless content distribution and efficient token revocation capabilities, streaming providers can effectively clamp down on piracy.

To learn more, schedule some time with one of our 

, personalization, and real-time data enrichment services, read this brief 

Access Denied: Curbing The Growing Menace of Digital Piracy

Ecommerce Threatened By Rising Cyberattacks

Whether it is the launch of a new game, or much anticipated new release, or even a popular gaming period (like a holiday break), gaming studios need to be ready for surges in traffic. There are an estimated 

. Even in typical traffic periods, virtual waiting rooms can balance server loads, ensure 

, add revenue opportunities, ensure fair queues, match gamers, thwart bots, and improve the gaming experience to ensure continual playing enjoyment.

 industry's quest for efficient queue management. Especially during high-

 events like promotions or game launches, the influx of players can strain game servers, resulting in issues such as lag and crashes. Virtual waiting rooms step in as a solution, ensuring a fair and equitable experience for all players.

These digital spaces help evenly distribute incoming players across servers, preventing overcrowding on a single server and optimizing server performance. As a result, players can enjoy a consistently smooth gaming experience without the frustration of server lag.

Prevent outages and streamline maintenance updates

Gamers are easily frustrated when they can’t get in a system whether it is after waiting months to try out a new game - or when they try to play their favorite existing game.

 experienced a 3 day outage that resulted in a loss of revenue from virtual purchases for the game company and content creators - especially during the Halloween period. 

 service outages, rumors can affect a company's reputation. ​​Earlier this year, a popular 

 experienced an outage that stoked gamers' fears that the company might be retiring support for an earlier generation, contrary to a statement they made about possible new 

While these situations may not reflect traffic or a server load issue (the online game platform specifically indicated it was not a traffic issue), many outages can be avoided when an intelligent waiting room queues traffic and balances loads across different origin services.

During server maintenance or updates, gaming companies can employ virtual waiting rooms to inform players about the downtime and manage their expectations. Players are placed in a queue until the maintenance is complete, reducing frustration and confusion.

It is important to remember any downtime can certainly affect a company’s revenue and may make gamers start considering other options for their gaming time and future purchases.

Leveraging wait time for marketing and players’ entertainment

People game for various reasons - socialization, entertainment, perhaps a few minutes or hours of escaping from challenges in their daily lives and immersing themselves in a 

. The “gaming experience” should begin as soon as a player logs in and the virtual waiting room is another chance to delight gamers and gauge their interest.

Virtual waiting rooms aren't just about managing queues; they can also be a valuable marketing tool. Consider this: while players wait their turn, they're an attentive audience with time to spare. Why not use this time to engage with them and make it fun? Smart gaming companies have started using virtual waiting rooms to showcase add-ons, new games, or special offers. 

 indicated that gaming revenue would reach $172B this year and that $81B was in-app purchases. This creative use of wait time can boost cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

Adding excitement and stability to event launches

Gaming companies frequently use virtual waiting rooms during major events like game launches, expansions, or in-game events. Players are placed in a queue, and they enter the game in the order they joined the queue. This prevents server crashes and provides a controlled and organized start to the event.

Making premium access a true VIP experience

Virtual waiting rooms can transform the premium gaming experience by recreating the feeling of being a true VIP with exclusive privileges. For premium players that pay extra for early access to new content or servers, the waiting room acts as a virtual velvet rope, setting them apart from regular players.

Async games can offer galleries showcasing premium-only concept art, cosmetics, and other exclusive content to engage players while they wait to enter. For synchronous games like MMOs, the waiting room can host mini-games, quizzes, character customization, and interactions between premium players to make the wait time fly by.

Once the queue has cleared, doors could open triggering an exciting animation or sound effect signaling that premium players can now enter before anyone else. The waiting room experience taps into people's desire for status and exclusivity. Done right, it can make premium access feel like joining an exclusive club. Allowing premium players to bypass tedious queues to access exclusive lounges turns waiting from a nuisance into a privilege, enhancing the value of their membership.

Maintaining an equitable and consistent experience is critical for customer satisfaction. Intelligent virtual waiting rooms optimize access through advanced algorithms that queue users fairly based on configurable policies like:

First-In-First-Out (FIFO): Players enter the game server in the order they joined the queue, reflecting the natural flow of arrivals.

Random: Players are assigned random positions in the queue, adding an element of chance and preventing players from timing their logins to jump the line.

Lottery: Players are entered into a randomized lottery draw for queue positions, similar to a raffle. This prevents queues from always favoring the same set of players.

Players can also be matched with others of similar skill levels while waiting, for better gameplay experiences once in-game. The queue could be dynamically adjusted based on real-time assessments of the number of players online or the demand for matches.

The customizable queue placement models ensure resources are distributed fairly using access rules tailored to the specific business use case. Intelligent virtual waiting rooms deliver optimization through flexible, user-centric service policies that maintain fairness and enhance the player experience.

Intelligent virtual waiting rooms help defend against DDoS 

 in online games. During major launches or esports events, bad actors may try to overwhelm servers with traffic to disguise cheating attempts. Some examples in gaming include:

New expansion releases: Attackers could flood servers with requests to more easily scoop up limited inventory, game currencies, or character names for resale.

Esports tournaments: DDoS attacks could be used to lag competitor connections to gain an advantage.

Leaderboard hacks: Creating traffic surges may allow cheaters to disguise illegitimate high scores or achievement unlocks.

Drop/skin farming: Bots can overwhelm servers to more efficiently farm rare game drops or cosmetic skins for resale on gray markets.

By controlling and metering incoming traffic, virtual waiting rooms filter out suspicious traffic spikes. This combats DDoS disruptions and cheating, freeing up security teams to focus on game integrity. The waiting rooms provide a layer of defense, maintaining availability for legitimate players while stopping cheaters and hackers.

Why some virtual waiting rooms fall short

Not all virtual waiting rooms are created equal. Basic implementations can easily get overwhelmed by traffic surges, leaving users stuck in an endless loop. They may struggle to differentiate between real users and unknown bots. Some lack real-time updates to keep users informed and engaged while waiting.

Elevate game playing with PhotonIQ Virtual Waiting Rooms

 deliver low latency protection and smooth experiences for online games. Powered by AI, the waiting rooms act as an intelligent gatekeeper, carefully controlling the flow of players entering game servers.

The queue priority and access rules are fully customizable based on criteria like server loads, suspicious traffic patterns, player thresholds, traffic spike alerts, or other defined conditions. Advanced routing can recognize returning players, send suspected cheating 

 to infinite loops, or offer promotional opportunities to players in queue.

Key metrics like server utilization, duplicate request rate, and peak queue length allow gaming companies to optimize the settings for fair, low-latency access worldwide. Players stay informed with real-time queue status and updates. Virtual waiting rooms smooth uneven traffic patterns, absorb malicious attacks, and enhance gameplay for legitimate fans. The intelligent queuing eliminates disruptive lag, maintaining seamless gaming connectivity.

Learn more today and be ready for Virtual Waiting Rooms 2.0!

The role of virtual waiting rooms in the gaming industry extends far beyond mere queue management. They are critical tools for maintaining server stability, ensuring fairness, and enhancing overall player satisfaction. A well-implemented virtual waiting room strategy can lead to better gaming experiences, higher player retention, and increased revenue for gaming companies.

To learn more about how PhotonIQ can elevate gaming experiences with intelligent Virtual Waiting Rooms, chat with an 

Elevating Gaming Experiences With Smarter Traffic Management

Unlocking The Future of Gaming: Insights From The Great Cloud Reset

Navigating The Evolving Landscape Of Online Gaming Security

The Challenge is SaaS APIs on the Cloud - the Solution is the Edge

Whether you are an eCommerce company planning for Black Friday or a ticket hub selling for a top artist, periods of traffic spikes can be a “happy problem” or a way to lose business. It can be challenging to prepare your infrastructure to handle 

, despite the best “planned” chaos engineering and stress testing.

IT teams may have difficulty justifying ramping up back-end resources and reworking special features and functions for a short period of time when budgets could be applied to year round gains. On the other hand, online businesses cannot afford 

 since customers will drop off and may not come back at all if the website crashes. On average, the top ten US eCommerce sites (outside of Amazon) can lose about 

 and this number could rise exponentially during a key event.


Many companies have relied on virtual waiting rooms, only to be faced with 

crashes, endless looping queues, and failures at scale

 while using significant and costly infrastructure resources. In this blog, we will talk about a new approach to virtual waiting rooms that keep customers engaged and websites up and running even during high traffic events.

Intelligent virtual waiting rooms manage traffic and drive demand

 act like "digital bouncers" carefully controlling entry when traffic surges to ensure excellent performance and reliability. When demand exceeds capacity, an intelligent virtual waiting room acts as a buffer between users and origin services and holds users in a queued "lobby" and then grants access at a measured pace to avoid overloading. This prevents crashes, maintains uptime, and improves the user experience. Key features include organized queue management, access metering, and custom branding during waits, providing a controlled entry point that manages 

By strategically deploying an intelligent virtual waiting room, businesses can smoothly absorb traffic variability without expensive over-provisioning. The welcome lobby could be personalized with interesting videos or other content, while letting the customer know their place in the queue and the time they have left before entry. 

 show in traditional store settings, customers are 20% more likely to buy if they are greeted within minutes of their arrival. The personalized virtual waiting room is akin to an in-person champagne welcome that can make the wait time pleasurable and set the stage for the service or buying process. The key is customers need assurance on their place in line and visibility into their progress as they invest their time.

The positive side effect on sales conversions

One great benefit of intelligent virtual waiting rooms is that you are actually pre-qualifying your shoppers by placing them in a queue. Those who stay are more likely to purchase, providing a higher conversion rate. There are some interesting psychological and economical principles that a waiting room can leverage.

People assign more value to things that are rare or dwindling in availability, as the harder something is to acquire, the more people want it. The fear of missing out on a scarce chance makes us not want to pass it up, as the potential regret drives action. American psychologist and author, 

, lists scarcity as one of six key influencers of human behavior due to our instinct to value rare opportunities. Let’s not forget that 

 are based on how we feel, so the psychology of human behavior plays a huge role.

Insights for service optimization and better personalization

Intelligent virtual waiting rooms offer a wealth of insights into customer behavior. By tracking key metrics in real time and analyzing trends over time, companies gain invaluable data to optimize the 

. These services can shed light on metrics including:

Number of users in queue - Understand traffic volumes and plan staffing for spikes.

Average wait times - Monitor if delays remain reasonable or risk abandonment.

Abandonment rate - Identify pain points causing drop-offs.

Content views - See which content and offers resonate by view frequency and duration.

Survey results - Gauge engagement and preferences through response rates and feedback.

Look at the intelligent virtual waiting room as an extension of the customer experience, the company brand and the promotion or event marketing. The virtual lobby becomes a feedback loop for continual optimizations driven by real user signals.

Intelligent virtual waiting rooms enable a streamlined experience as users move through the queue. When a user first arrives at the waiting room page, they receive real-time updates showing estimated wait times and the number of users ahead of them in line. Progress bars and countdown timers keep them engaged as they move up in the queue. Right before reaching the front, users may see a quick “Get ready!” or whatever tailored message suits your brand or purpose, allowing time to refresh the page. Then, they are automatically granted access through a redirect to the origin website. Companies and agencies can really tailor the experience to their audience, or specific customers based on past data.

For example, a motor vehicle queue on the last day of the month (when service requests are high) could promote safety events, make citizens aware of new laws, or even provide low-cost insurance options. Based on the IP address, they could also share nearby construction plans for roads and have them sign up for updates. The idea is to find useful and interesting information while they are waiting and have the waiting room an extension of the company’s or agency’s site and customer/citizen experience.

To prevent overloading the target servers, duplicate requests are detected and handled by holding those users at their current spot instead of letting them jump the line with a fresh request. Behind the scenes traffic is metered to maximize fulfillment rates. This seamless workflow allows the service to manage demand and maintain optimal performance in the background, creating a 

Upholding fairness with the FIFO method and more

Maintaining an equitable and consistent experience is crucial for customer satisfaction. Intelligent virtual waiting rooms optimize access through advanced algorithms that queue users fairly based on configurable policies like First-In-First-Out (FIFO) or a random option. This prevents users from unfairly jumping the line while still allowing businesses to tailor the workflow to their needs.

 could prioritize users who have already invested time filling a shopping cart, so they don't lose their effort by dropping out of the queue. Or concert venues could randomly assign placement to give everyone an equal shot at the best seats.

, players can be placed in different segments of the queue based on the assessed skill levels. The queue could be dynamically adjusted based on the number of players online or the demand for matches.

The customizable queue placement models ensure resources are distributed fairly using access rules tailored to the specific business use case. Intelligent virtual waiting rooms deliver optimization through flexible, user-centric service policies that maintain fairness.

Effective DDoS attack defense and thwarting ticket bots

Intelligent virtual waiting rooms also contribute to thwarting 

 and related malicious activity. During large events, bad actors will try to slip through the chaos and send thousands to millions of requests, perhaps as a distraction while they try other criminal activity like fraud. Here are some possible examples to watch out for:

eCommerce/Retail: In certain parts of the world, these attacks tend to intensify from October to December, leveraging legitimate holiday traffic as camouflage for malicious activities like purchasing highly sought items and reselling for profit on another site.

Ticketing/Events: For high-demand concerts, attackers may attempt to overwhelm the website right as tickets go on sale, allowing them to scalp those tickets at inflated prices.

: During peak travel booking periods, DDoS attacks could be used to overwhelm sites to scoop up limited inventory for resale at higher prices. Major holidays and popular destinations would be potential targets.

Public Sector: DDoS attacks may be launched to disguise fraudulent electronic tax filings or identity theft attempts. The distraction provides cover for their crimes.

By controlling incoming traffic and filtering out suspicious requests, intelligent virtual waiting rooms act as a formidable defense against DDoS attacks, safeguarding the integrity and availability of online platforms. They also let 

, DevSecOps, and Security teams focus on fraud prevention activities vs. traffic control.

PhotonIQ’s Virtual Waiting Rooms (VWRs)

 deliver lightning-fast response times and low latency surge protection for eCommerce, event, travel, gaming, 

, and public sector. Powered by AI, VWRs act as an intelligent gatekeeper, carefully controlling the flow of visitors entering a website. The queuing and access rules of the VWRs are fully programmable, and can be configured based on a variety of criteria like backend server loads, suspicious visitor patterns, visitor thresholds, geographic regions, traffic spike alerts, or other defined conditions.

Advanced routing can recognize previous customers, send suspected bad 

 to looping queues, or deliver cached versions of a site to 

 crawlers without hitting the origin. Create fast seamless access anywhere in the world, and sort through criteria at edge speed with intelligent, AI-driven mechanisms. Use key metrics like request success rate, origin service utilization, duplicate request rate, and peak queue length to optimize settings and customer experiences.

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