Engineering at the Edge of Impossibility: How We Delivered 973 Million Requests Per Minute During a Global Sporting Event

PubNub's real-time infrastructure successfully handled an unprecedented scale of user engagement during a global sports event, processing 57.9 billion requests in an hour and peaking at 973 million requests per minute across 200+ countries without downtime. This achievement was facilitated by their advanced engineering practices, which include geo-based routing using GeoDNS, autoscaling on Kubernetes with Amazon EKS, real-time monitoring with drift detection, and a robust network architecture built on C and Rust. Their system efficiently managed the 'thundering herd' problem of simultaneous user reactions, ensuring seamless user experiences. Beyond technical prowess, PubNub Illuminate provided insights into user engagement patterns, allowing for analysis of reactions and user behavior during the event. The success showcased the evolving expectations for interactive experiences in apps, emphasizing the significance of built-in communication features and AI-powered moderation tools. PubNub's engineering principles highlight the importance of readiness for massive scale and real-time performance in modern applications.

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