Waiting room with zero latency

A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium that provides instructions that, if executed by a processor of a computing device functioning as a ticket master for a website that has a virtual waiting room, will cause said ticket master to perform operations for allocating tickets to a plurality of proxies controlling access to the website, the operations comprising:

• when the ticket master is in a relaxed mode, pre-allocating a number of tickets to the plurality of proxies for a first upcoming time period and setting a queue head for the first upcoming time period to a ticket number of a last ticket created, wherein the number of tickets that are pre-allocated for the first upcoming time period is greater than a target number of users allowed to enter the website during the first upcoming time period but less than a predefined maximum sudden spike number, and wherein the pre-allocating comprises transmitting, to each of the plurality of proxies, a range of ticket numbers allocated to the proxy and the queue head for the first upcoming time period;
• switching from the relaxed mode to a pressure mode in response to a determination that a sum of average ticket consumption rates of the plurality of proxies is greater than a threshold ticket consumption rate;
• and
• when the ticket master is in the pressure mode, allocating tickets to the plurality of proxies according to a number of users currently waiting for a ticket at respective ones of the plurality of proxies and setting a queue head for a second upcoming time period, wherein the queue head for the second upcoming time period is allowed to be greater than the ticket number of the last ticket created, and wherein the plurality of proxies allows users possessing a ticket having a ticket number that is less than the queue head to access the website.

A computing device to function as a ticket master for a website that has a virtual waiting room, wherein the ticket master is communicatively coupled to a plurality of proxies controlling access to the website, the computing device comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium having instructions stored therein, which when executed by the one or more processors, causes the ticket master to:
• when the ticket master is in a relaxed mode, pre-allocate a number of tickets to the plurality of proxies for a first upcoming time period and set a queue head for the first upcoming time period to a ticket number of a last ticket created, wherein the number of tickets that are pre-allocated for the first upcoming time period is greater than a target number of users allowed to enter the website during the first upcoming time period but less than a predefined maximum sudden spike number, and wherein the pre-allocating comprises transmitting, to each of the plurality of proxies, a range of ticket numbers allocated to the proxy and the queue head for the first upcoming time period,
• switching from the relaxed mode to a pressure mode in response to a determination that a sum of average ticket consumption rates of the plurality of proxies is greater than a threshold ticket consumption rate, and
• when the ticket master is in the pressure mode, allocate tickets to the plurality of proxies according to a number of users currently waiting for a ticket at respective ones of the plurality of proxies and set a queue head for a second upcoming time period, wherein the queue head for the second upcoming time period is allowed to be greater than the ticket number of the last ticket created, and wherein the plurality of proxies allows users possessing a ticket having a ticket number that is less than the queue head to access the website.