83 replies to this topic

[dan05delaney]

As an self confessed "IT Geek" can someone explain what happened and why this worked for so many people... my tired, stressed mind can't work it out this early on a Sunday

[tilt]

See mistyped one of their IPs in their DNS so all traffic was going through one server. Adding the other IP to the HOSTS file took you straight to the other, empty server.

[eFestivals]

As an self confessed "IT Geek" can someone explain what happened and why this worked for so many people... my tired, stressed mind can't work it out this early on a Sunday

See Tickets messed up the DNS entries for glastonbury.seetickets.com (the dns entry is what directs a URL entry to an IP address) - and the result was that all requests were going to one server when they should have gone to two servers.

By editing the hosts file it forced the request to go to the unused server - which was why it worked so easily for everyone that tried (cos only those who edited the hosts file were hitting that server).

Mid-sale, See Tickets sorted out their dns entries so that it no longer gave an advantage (and probably gave a disadvantage cos more people would have been hitting that server).

[al_coholic]

From what I have seen and read.....

It looks like when the site was published it had a typo in the IP address of one of the servers. 192 instead of 194, so all hits were only being directed to 1 server instead of 2. By changing your host file to point directly at the correct IP address I think we were hitting a server that was hardly being used and so we were getting straight in.

Seetickets fixed this around 10am by updating their DNS to the correct IP address after this it was harder to get in because the load was being spread.

[dan05delaney]

ahh right thanks... wow epic fuck up on see's end, just think how quick it could of sold out

[smash]

Another see tickets farce!

[dan05delaney]

Another see tickets farce!

one line of code... happens to the best coders,

[thesecretingredientiscrime]

So if they were all going to one server, that means if it had been running correctly, they could have gone even quicker?!

[smash]

one line of code... happens to the best coders,

Just not acceptable!

[acidpod23]

I've got to get on this case next year..i didn't use it, but luckily my friend got through 2 mins before it sold out! Next time, i will listen to you here!

[dan05delaney]

So if they were all going to one server, that means if it had been running correctly, they could have gone even quicker?!

if everything worked properly it could of sold out in less than an hour (in theory)

[dan05delaney]

Just not acceptable!

for one day a year, estimated unique hits about 2million... 150,000 tickets sold... in 70 mins..

[al_coholic]

In my opinion it is lucky that there are a few IT geeks on here, many of us will have missed out without this trick.

[CitizenErased]

I don't believe they did that. It isn't that difficult to correctly copy/type out 4, three digit numbers seperated by a dot.

[eFestivals]

See tell me that without the DNS cock-up, all the tickets would have sold within an hour.

[darkskiez]

What infuriates me so much is that it only costs a couple of quid to spin up some Amazon/Rackspace Cloud Servers, you could have 100s of servers online rather than two, for just an hour and process everyones requests seamlessly. (it costs around 15p / hour / server)

[grhm]

Luckily I got my tickets the old fashioned way, lots of refreshing pages, but I completely missed this DNS workaround. For next time - how was it discovered, and was there a separate thread for it that i missed while refreshing all those tabs?

[darkskiez]

I noticed it pretty quickly when i got a webserver on my work intranet coming up instead of the purchase page, so i did a lookup and spotted they had used a private address 192.168 instead of the NTL range 194.168 the other server was on.

[smash]

for one day a year, estimated unique hits about 2million... 150,000 tickets sold... in 70 mins..

Exactly they know its coming and there are issues every year. If its not one problem it's another. See Tix are crap.

[bazza]

If I was into conspiracy theories, I might think that this was on purpose to allow dedicated glasto goers who frequent the efests boards a way of getting tickets...................