geeky techie chat about the ticket sale

[eFestivals]

http://www.riverbed.com/customer-stories/see-tickets.html

there's a bit of bullshit in there. 100% uptime, pah!

[Stu H]

any "improvement" noticed yesterday will have been firstly because of the much lower load yesterday than they'll be on Sunday.

Not necessarily. The load balancers don't really care how much traffic is coming into it. They can handle millions of hits. It's what happens when you then get a connection.

Last year for coach tickets, I repeatedly got into choosing a day and then it crashing (at payment).

It's the "customer journey" (overused phrase in my World!) from after you're connected, that is much better.

The hundreds of thousands of extra hits on Sunday *SHOULD* just be sorted by the kit early on.

(I've tempted fate now, it's going to crash all around us!)

[stuartbert two hats]

I would avoid the multiple tabs thing, that's pretty good advice.

It's probably working based on your IP address, so if it gets a connection, the timing starts. It won't care about browser, machine you're using, what country you're in or how many cups of coffee you've had - it's just pot luck!

Let me try and describe some of these bits of kit. Next gen firewalls (which I hope See Tickets have!) and load balancers can do some very funky things. They can restrict access based on all sorts of things; e.g. country. They COULD realistically set up a web server JUST for foreign traffic. I'm not sure why they would want to do that, but it's possible.

The kit will be looking out for signs of stress, DDOS attacks etc - but that would be thousands if not millions of hits in a small period of time (and from differing machines for the same attack) - so it doesn't matter how fast your refresh finger is, you'll be fine!!

As an IT Security bod who knows the set up of these kind of things, I would have 2 or 3 people trying for you, in a couple of different physical locations, stick to one browser and just keep refreshing.

It really is luck folks.

Good luck to us all - I'm nervous too!

Yeah, sounds like if the reg number has already been used, a different message appear to the one I saw. There's a poster who saw it on the main "too many people trying" thread - http://www.efestivals.co.uk/forums/topic/188953-can-you-have-too-many-people-trying-for-you/page-2#entry4478792

[Stu H]

They had 3 on last year too for the main sale. The third got added to the farm at about 0830 and I posted the IP's on here somewhere.

Ah. Ignore my previous comment then, haha!

Looks like their decision to finally spend some money though, has helped!

[eFestivals]

Good point, except I didn't try the main sale last year, just the coach sale.

tho last year there was a hugely increased demand too, because the Stones - and Michael's bullshit - had raised expectations with the bands.

This year, pleasingly, there3w's the opposite effect. Metallica will have made plenty of peeps decide not to bother.

[stuartbert two hats]

They had 3 on last year too for the main sale. The third got added to the farm at about 0830 and I posted the IP's on here somewhere.

So are they just using in-house servers? I'm surprised they're using so few boxes.

[stuartbert two hats]

tho last year there was a hugely increased demand too, because the Stones - and Michael's bullshit - had raised expectations with the bands.

This year, pleasingly, there3w's the opposite effect. Metallica will have made plenty of peeps decide not to bother.

I think they sold out faster this year though. I still reckon the setup is better than last year.

[eFestivals]

Not necessarily. The load balancers don't really care how much traffic is coming into it. They can handle millions of hits.

but no kit can handle a greater load than that kit can handle - hence the system falling over during last year's Sunday sale, for example.

I'm not knocking it. Compared to the past, it's brilliant. But there's still always a finite limit.

[stuartbert two hats]

http://www.riverbed.com/customer-stories/see-tickets.html

Thanks for that - interesting read!

[eFestivals]

I think they sold out faster this year though.

don't be fooled by that.

A timescale for any sale is decided before that sale. The tickets are NOT sold as quickly as the kit might be able to sell them.

I know this cos the bods at See have told me that's how they do it.

Edited October 2, 2014 by eFestivals

[parsonjack]

Not necessarily. The load balancers don't really care how much traffic is coming into it. They can handle millions of hits. It's what happens when you then get a connection.

Last year for coach tickets, I repeatedly got into choosing a day and then it crashing (at payment).

It's the "customer journey" (overused phrase in my World!) from after you're connected, that is much better.

The hundreds of thousands of extra hits on Sunday *SHOULD* just be sorted by the kit early on.

(I've tempted fate now, it's going to crash all around us!)

The load balancer concurrent session limit will firstly be dictated by the licence they have....then by the admin on each content rule to set a session limit above which the 'queue' page fires as a 'sorry' page. Any improvement noticed last night may simply be due to some tweaking of session settings in the knowledge that it would be less subscribed than on Sunday.

6 years on CISCO CSS and ace leads me to think this way....

[stuartbert two hats]

don't be fooled by that.

A timescale for any sale is decided before that sale. The tickets are NOT sold as quickly as the kit might be able to sell them.

I know this cos the bods at See have told me that's how they do it.

Fair enough. Do you know why?

[parsonjack]

So are they just using in-house servers? I'm surprised they're using so few boxes.

Yep I think so. The IP's are all registered to Way-Ahead who own the Seetickets brand.

[eFestivals]

Fair enough. Do you know why?

I'm not entirely sure that was ever said explicitly.

My thinking is that it's done to try and lessen complaints. If the tickets all go in 5 minutes everyone that loses out will scream that it wasn't fair.

If it's done over (say) an hour, then at least those who miss out feel they've had a fair chance.

Plus of course, a longer sale benefits those who try harder to get tickets - which is the only 'manipulation' of the system that i think is a good thing.

[eFestivals]

Yep I think so. The IP's are all registered to Way-Ahead who own the Seetickets brand.

That's just the servers on the front of the system tho.

I think they're using a cloud-like server farm for the back end, which is, in theory, infinitely expandable.

Edited October 2, 2014 by eFestivals

[parsonjack]

Fair enough. Do you know why?

They will throttle with session limit on the load balancers as described. They could sell just 3 tickets at once if they liked.

[Stu H]

They will throttle with session limit on the load balancers as described. They could sell just 3 tickets at once if they liked.

Haha - can you imagine if they did?! Still up, wired, Monday morning, hitting F5?!!!

Edited October 2, 2014 by Stu H

[parsonjack]

That's just the servers on the front of the system tho.

I think they're using a cloud-like server farm for the back end, which is, in theory, infinitely expandable.

True. They could outsource the booking engine itself as you say....in the current scheme of things it's the front end session that we all need though.

[eFestivals]

They will throttle with session limit on the load balancers as described. They could sell just 3 tickets at once if they liked.

"throttle" - that's the word I was trying to think of.

[eFestivals]

Haha - can you imagine if they did?! Still up, wired, Monday morning, hitting F5?!!!

I guess you weren't around in about 2005, when the ticket sale went on for 36 hours.

That was a frigging nightmare!

[scaryclaireyfairy]

yeah, i seem to recall the tickets coming onsale late in '04 as well then it taking bloody hours. we got ours on the phone in the end.

[eFestivals]

True. They could outsource the booking engine itself as you say....in the current scheme of things it's the front end session that we all need though.

I've got efests set-up with a "front" server, with the heavy work done on another server.

I haven't had to spunk a fortune on a bought-in system either, I've knocked it together myself ... tho of course it doesn't have the same load.

The limits with the load on the efests system is what I can afford to have in place. I can't afford to spend thousands on servers which will only get utilised for perhaps an hour a year.

[eFestivals]

PS - am about to change the topic title, to avoid confusion.

I'll call it something geeky, as it's gone that way.

[parsonjack]

I heard a rumour that the John Peel tent is being renamed the Steve Jobs tent....

[scorp]

I can't take this haha

i can, provided i gets a tick, loz