Coping with Short-term Sustained Peak Demands──several cost-effective strategies

For most open universities， in fact for most universities， there will arise occasions when some online activities will have to be completed by all students in a very short time interval. These occasions usually result in a great rush to get online as quickly as possible; the rush is often made worst by the limited good choice on offer such that usually only the earliest can get the best. Choosing and confirming elective subjects， when only a limited number for each are offered， on a first-come-first-served basis is an example. At the Open University Malaysia the rush occurs when confirming offered subjects and chossing face-to-face meeting timetable. Most students rushed to be earlist to ensure choice slot in the timetable are obtained. Available I.T. resources such as Internet bandwidth and servers cannot cope with these short-term sustained peak demands. Unless these peak demands are met， however， online services will slow down drastically resulting in long queues of users waiting to be served. Providing excess capacity， if at all possible， to ensure these short duration peak demands can be met would not be cost-effective since most of the time these resources are not utilized. This paper will look at some cost-effective approaches to meeting these short-term peak demands.