2012 Olympics highlight need for web testing to handle peak traffic

How big might Olympic traffic be? Sports hub Bleacher Report is predicting between two and three times as much traffic as 'normal' days. On average the site has 90 million monthly visits and more than 900 million monthly pageviews; during the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament (March Madness) they received 50,000 requests per minute. The platform is using New Relic to help plan for the traffic increases and boost system performance during high traffic times.

One of the highest trafficked websites will likely be the London2012.com site - the official website for the Games. The platform offers detailed coverage of the games and events during the two week Olympic period. They're using SOASTA to ensure visitors to the site have a good time visiting.

SOASTA's CloudTest platform is one way the site is planning for heavy traffic; in June SOASTA released CloudTest Mobile, supporting iOS 6 to help mobile sites maintain top performance.

"The explosion of web and mobile applications along with the proliferation of mobile devices, makes manual testing obsolete. With today's rapid development cycles, time to market requirements and technology changes, developers require a new set of automation solutions to support multi-touch gestures and 3D gaming," said Tom Lounibos, CEO SOASTA. "Now, with CloudTest Mobile, developers can quickly develop, test and deliver their mobile applications with the quality their users expect. Our support for Titanium 2.0 will make this especially seamless for Appcelerator's mobile developer community."

By testing websites for spikes in traffic, brands can create more user-friendly and fast online experiences - and keep consumers from clicking away because of crashed sites or slow page-load times.

Tags: 2012 Olympic Games, Bleacher Report, online traffic, SOASTA, website testing