Armik Ayoubdel, head of CommSec's e-business and infrastructure, said news of the October 12 bombings on the Indonesian island sparked panic among online traders, driving the number of concurrent logins at the site to a new record.
Ayoubdel estimates that during the peak of the post-incident panic, the day after the bombing, close to 35,000 traders were logged on to the site simultaneously to check their market positions.
It appears that a disaster at the site may narrowly have been averted. CommSec which handles around 250 million to 350 million Web hits per month, recently upgraded its server infrastructure following reports from customers that transactions were taking a long time to complete.
According to the CBA's chief operating officer, Michael Blomfield, the bank's load handling switches had been unable to cope with the level of traffic on the site, with CommSec customers being directed to overloaded servers.
"Thankfully we were there for the day after the Bali bombings," said Ayoubdel.
The recently completed network upgrade allows the bank to duplicate the operation's entire server infrastructure and dual-host the site.
"With the changes we've put in we're running at about 35 to 38 percent capacity at each site so that gives us enough redundancy that if one happens to go then the other one will pick-up the load," said Ayoubdel.
According to Ayoubdel the bank now strives to be at no more than 50 percent capacity at each site, at any one time.
The new network design also allows CommSec administrators to alter the amount of capacity it allocates to different portions of the site.
At peak times the lion's share of the site's traffic may be spread over just four to five pages, said Ayoubdel.
so much for freedom of speech:CommSec Tech Support 29/10/2003 12:22:12 General Chat Dear All, This is a reminder to all users that the CommSec CHAT-ROOMS are for market related discussions. The GENERAL room is for GENERAL STOCKMARKET RELATED chat ONLY. It is not a vehicle to express personal views about issues not related to the markets. This message is to inform users that I will be revoking privileges without warning if I deem messages to be non market related effective immediately. Regards Armik Ayoubdel,