The web team at www.chess.ibm.com knew from past experience that on game days, chess fans would head to the site in droves at a specific time - about 3 p.m. US time. It was a webmaster's worst nightmare - faced with the task of getting thousands of users through the same door at the same time.

So from the outset, www.chess.ibm.com was designed to attract user visits before rush hour began, and to keep them there when no game was being played.

To minimize the rush-hour crunch:

• Content was developed and posted in the morning, so users would visit the site early to catch the latest news. Images cached on their local systems reduced hits to the server when these users came back during the game.
• The "critical path" from the www.chess.ibm.com home page was redirected at noon each game day to send users directly to the game page. Here they could download the java applet well in advance of the start of the game, again caching the necessary files on the server ahead of time.
• During off days, the last game played was highlighted, encouraging users to download and replay it.
• When game time neared, pages on the "critical path" were changed to the "lite" version - with minimal graphics and text to reduce the server load.

detailed views

overview
on-site operations
server complex
end user
why did we do it?