High Volume Traffic Handling for Ordering High Demand Products

A light-weight system is employed to meter traffic into an ecommerce system when the expected level of traffic would cause performance instability and other issues. A distribution service system logically sits in front of the ecommerce system when traffic is or is expected to be extraordinarily high. Users complete a page form indicating interest in purchasing an item. High-speed logging of the request record is performed by the distribution service engine. Basic preliminary filter services are applied to the file with records failing preliminary checks flagged or removed. The remaining records are presented to a distribution engine. A distribution algorithm determines an optimal policy for allowing the users to place orders, specifying the particular time period allowed, which has the effect of metering orders into the system at a rate at which the system can continue to perform optimally.