Final answer:
A sudden spike in application traffic can lead to server overload and poor user experience if the infrastructure is not scalable.
Step-by-step explanation:
When traffic spikes in your application, several things could happen depending on the infrastructure and scalability of your system. If your application is hosted on a server with limited resources, and it's not configured to handle large amounts of traffic, this could lead to server overload, slow response times, and potentially server crashes. This creates a poor user experience and could potentially result in loss of revenue and user trust.
On the other hand, if your application is set up with scalable infrastructure, such as cloud services that offer auto-scaling capabilities, your system can adapt to the increased demand by automatically allocating more resources. This means more servers or instances can come online to handle the load as needed. After the traffic spike subsides, the system can scale back down to save resources. Cloud services with auto-scaling capabilities can dynamically allocate resources to handle increased demand and maintain performance. Proper infrastructure design, including load balancing and DDoS protection, is crucial for dealing with traffic spikes.
Organizations need to ensure their infrastructure can handle sudden spikes in traffic to maintain a robust online presence. Implementing load balancing, caching strategies, and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection are also critical considerations for maintaining service availability and performance during traffic surges.