From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1:
10.5.4 503 Service Unavailable
The server is currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server.
The implication is that this is a temporary condition which will be alleviated after some delay.
If known, the length of the delay may be indicated in a Retry-After header. If no Retry-After is given, the client SHOULD handle the response as it would for a 500 response.
Note: The existence of the 503 status code does not imply that a server must use it when becoming overloaded. Some servers may wish to simply refuse the connection.
