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.