Case study

Grays.com & Peakhour: High-Performance Delivery for Australia's #1 Auction Site

Grays, Australia's #1 auction site, required robust delivery caching to deliver a fast, reliable experience for millions of users. Peakhour Edge with Origin Shield achieved a 99% cache hit rate, drastically reducing origin load and enhancing user experience.

Grays.com & Peakhour: High-Performance Delivery for Australia's #1 Auction Site
99% Cache Hit Rate
Massive Reduction in Origin Load
Improved Platform Performance

Technical review

What changed in production

Each study is structured around the operating problem, the Peakhour control path, and the measurable outcome.

Challenge

The Challenge

  • As Australia's leading auction site, Grays handles immense traffic with thousands of auctions daily.
  • High origin server load during peak bidding times threatened site stability and performance.
  • Needed a delivery and cache layer that could efficiently cache a vast and frequently changing inventory.
  • Ensuring a fast and responsive user experience is critical to maximising bids and sales in a time-sensitive auction environment.

Solution

The Solution

  • Deployed Peakhour Edge to serve cached content closer to users.
  • Implemented Peakhour's Origin Shield, designating a specific POP to aggregate requests and shield the origin from redundant traffic.
  • Configured advanced caching rules to handle the dynamic nature of auction listings and user-specific content.
  • Provided a scalable infrastructure that could absorb traffic spikes during popular auctions without impacting performance.

Results

The Results

  • Achieved an exceptional 99% cache hit rate, demonstrating highly efficient content delivery.
  • Dramatically reduced the load on Grays' origin servers, improving stability and lowering infrastructure costs.
  • Significantly faster page load times for users across Australia, leading to an improved bidding experience.
  • Enhanced platform resilience, ensuring high availability during critical, high-traffic auction-ending periods.

Customer quote

"Peakhour's CDN and Origin Shield solution has been a game-changer for our platform's performance. The 99% cache hit rate has drastically reduced our server load and delivered a much faster experience for our users, which is critical in a competitive auction environment."
A

Ayaz Ahmed

Head of Technology, Grays.com

Peakhour controls used

Solution stack

The controls below are the relevant parts of the Peakhour request path for this customer outcome.

PERFORMANCE MODULE

Web Performance Optimisation

High-performance delivery and caching capability ensuring low latency and high availability for web applications.

Explore control

PERFORMANCE MODULE

Origin Shield

Increase cache hit rates and reduce origin load with an extra caching layer that consolidates requests.

Explore control

PERFORMANCE MODULE

Advanced Caching

Powerful and flexible caching controls to accelerate dynamic content and optimise delivery.

Explore control

Review your application security and request-path controls

Bring the current WAF, bot, API, cache, delivery, and logging setup. Peakhour will map where the platform can simplify protection, performance, and observability before origin.

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