Case Study: Forum One achieves a problem-free GlobalChange.gov launch that withstood 250,000 visitors with BlazeMeter

How The White House’s New Website Withstood Traffic Spike of 250,000 Visitors

Forum One, a US digital agency engaged by the White House to re-launch GlobalChange.gov for the Third National Climate Assessment, faced intense public interest and the pressure of recent high-profile rollout failures (e.g., HealthCare.gov). The core challenge was to reassure stakeholders that the hosting solution could handle large, mostly anonymous traffic and deliver a smooth, problem-free launch.

Forum One used BlazeMeter’s enterprise load-testing platform to run JMeter scripts in the cloud, spidered the site to simulate random traffic, and identified bottlenecks—most notably insufficient Varnish cache memory—which they fixed and retested. The site withstood a 250,000-visitor spike in the first 48 hours, launched without incident, earned praise from White House advisors, and led to ongoing/future contracts.

Forum One

William Hurley

Technical Development Manager