The largest National lottery in the Netherlands, tested by Polteq.
Each year, on January 1st, hundreds of thousands players consult the results page with their zip code to see if they have won a prize. Before this yearly highlight of the Dutch Postcode Lottery, Polteq will have already extensively tested the performance of this page to ensure that it can withstand maximum peak loads.
With more than 3 million participants by 2023, and 349 million euros of proceeds donated to charities, the Postcode Lottery is one of the largest lotteries in the Netherlands. Every year on January 1, the biggest prize of the previous year is awarded: the PostcodeKanjer.
Peak load
For many Postcode Lottery players, this is an important draw. This is also a highlight for the Postcode Lottery itself, because after this campaign, they will know how much money they have raised for charity. The number of visitors to their website reaches the highest number of the year.
Immediately after the draw, participants can use their zip code on the Postcode Lottery results page to check whether they have won a prize.
This results page is accessed through several routes: through the Postcode Lottery homepage or through direct links sent by e-mail to participants.
Performance test
To test the app performance, Polteq built a script that generates 2,300 page loads per second. This script used 100,000 random zip codes that were requested, in random order each time, on the results page.
To distribute the load, the scripts were split into 10 identical parts, reducing the load per script. These scripts were intentionally run on 10 different engines. To realistically simulate the high load, a cloud-based performance testing tool was chosen. After selecting the appropriate tool, the performance test was performed.
Thanks to this thorough test approach and the presented results of the performance test, it could be guaranteed that the peak load would not cause any problems. The results page of one of the largest lotteries in the Netherlands stands firm.
