john engates, the chief technology officer at rackgates, a server and software company. he's been inside the government website's command center. welcome to you both. mary agnes carey. 750now, well on its way to the 800,000 number national white house was talking about today, by 5:30 p.m. eastern. how is that different from what we saw a month ago? >> they say that it's more than double the usual traffic for a monday. and of course there has been a lot of news coverage of the changes they made on the web site. so maybe they are getting some people back who had some problems before. >> ifill: but there are still problems. i want you to explain what people mean when they say the front end and back end. >> the front end is the consumer experience. consumers logging on to heldcare.gov, and back end is information that goes to the health insurers, how many people are enrolled, do they have a subsidy, how much and so on. >> ifill: so the back end is the remaining problem right now, even though we assume that the patches that are made today will hold at the front end, 9 back en

. >> reporter: john engates is one of six analysts the white house invited to inspect the facility where technicians are working around the clock to fix the website. >> the website is doing better. it's certainly in a position where it's taking traffic, doing what it's supposed to do. >> reporter: engate says it may not be enough. >> if too many users come to the site at a given time the whole thing could stop. >> reporter: anticipating that, the administration the's top health official urged users to log on during off-peak hours. >> the president's legacy in many ways doesn't rest on politics or philosophy. it rests on technical competence, the ability to take his policy and turn it into reality that ordinary americans can take advantage of. >> reporter: one administration official says the site is close to being able to host 50,000 users at once but won't give a specific number. political analysts say the administration set the barlow and its goals vague to make it that much easier to claim success. lester? >> kristen welker, thank you very much. for more on the continuing challenges f

. >> reporter: john engates is one of six analysts the white house invited to inspect the facility where technicians are working around the clock to fix the website. he says ultimately it needs to support more than 50,000 users. >> this is a website that was in critical condition at the outset. i mean, it was in bad shape. i think this website is doing much better. >> reporter: now, some insurance companies are saying that they are still seeing some problems. administration officials continue to downplay expectations, urging people to log on during off-peak hours. we will get an official update a little bit later on this morning. that's when those who are working on the site are going to hold a conference call with reporters. lester, back to you. >> kristen welker, thanks. >>> david gregory is moderator of "meet the press." good morning. good to see you. >> good to see you, lester. >> the promise here is it would be running more smoothly by the beginning of december. how will they manage expectations going forward? >> very carefully. as kristen said, they want to monitor how people get o