The
surge in
traffic experienced by a
web site, usually when something
popular or
noteworthy is occurring. A flash crowd can be triggered by a
news article (the "
Slashdot Effect"), interesting events in the world (Traffic received by
voter.com during the
US presidential election in
2000), or a
download (the release of
HelixCode).
Flash crowds usually cause a denial of service of the origin server, unless it has either sufficient bandwidth on the first mile, or uses a content delivery network to absorb the crowd.