Akamai Technologies, Inc.
Admission policies for queued website visitors

Abstract:

It is known in the art to mitigate load on website servers by providing a virtual waiting room where visitors queue. However, in currently known approaches, queue management is "unfair", in that a given visitor is not admitted to the website based on the order in which they arrived, but rather on a fixed probability each time they try to gain access. Disclosed herein are improved systems and methods for admitting visitors from the waiting room to the website. In embodiments, queued visitors may be admitted in accordance with a probability function that can be customized by an administrator to achieve queue fairness and/or can be adaptive to website load. The systems and methods disclosed herein are compatible with the RESTful nature of common web transactions.