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Comment by A4ET8a8uTh0 | Hacker News Reader

I would love to get on RH put down train, but my not no name 401k provider had issues with their website entire Thurs morning last week.

It is kinda like a bank rush, only really well heeled institutions can survive everyone and their mother jumping in the fray.

Now.. the common question is whether the company should have an infrastructure that can support its customer load at times like this.

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I think to answer your question, yes, the company absolutely should have an infrastructure that can support this kind of load. The product that RH is selling is execution of trades, and failure to do so has drastic consequences. They are not some social network that can afford to go offline for a few hours due to high traffic, the stakes are significantly different.

Another thing to consider is that there are so many great alternatives to RH that were online, despite encountering similar load. If the whole stock trading network went down that would be a different conversation, but users of other platforms were able to trade, and thus RH not being able to provide the infrastructure to handle the load is a huge disservice to its customers.

Believe it or not, I agree with you. In cases like this I point to ISPs and their ability to sell more bandwidth than they can reasonably handle. Brokerages for regular clients know that lost uptime equals angry customers, who can and will move their money ( if not more ).

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