Case Study: Surfline achieves uninterrupted, high-performance live streaming during massive traffic spikes with Varnish Software's Streaming Server

Surfline - Customer Case Study

Surfline (Wavetrak, Inc.) operates the world’s largest coastal HD cam network and delivers up‑to‑the‑minute ocean weather, forecasts and editorial content across Surfline.com, Buoyweather.com and Fishtrack.com. During major weather events — which have driven traffic spikes of four‑to‑five times normal levels and, for example, a 200% visit increase during Hurricane Marie — the company needed to serve massive, real‑time demand (including mainstream media outlets) without overloading its legacy backend or making large hardware investments.

Surfline adopted Varnish Cache and then upgraded to Varnish Streaming Server, using VCL to implement granular caching, custom purging and request handling. The solution absorbed traffic spikes, kept page‑load and API response times fast, avoided adding application servers, and cut infrastructure costs, while enabling continued growth across sites, apps and data services; Surfline is now testing Varnish High Availability to further improve resilience and failover performance.

Surfline

Brian Mezger

Vice President of Technology