blocked IPs

[Leggins]

Can any techies, especially Matt_Berr as I used his advice about visiting the site before T day, please explain my T day experience to me in simple terms as complete technophobe here.

I had 2 browsers Firefox and IE with one tab each, but was mainly trying with firefox.

Was hitting F5 and was not really achieving anything. Not hardly getting the holding page just a white screen saying your connection need to be reset, I got this message a lot. (this was on firefox) When I got this message I just kept F5ing. Was this the right thing to do?

This would then sometimes take me back to the holding page, where I would keep F5ing and the same thing would keep happening. White screen with message connection needing to be reset and then the occasional holding page.

From the sounds of this was my IP address blocked? Was my F5ing classed as flooding See.

Did I have a bad CHARM rating, even though I had regularly visited the site before the Sale

Would love all you with knowledge to be able to tell me if I was doing the right thing? Told you I was a technophobe:)

[mikeb]

At the heart of the technology, Junos DDoS Secure's unique CHARM algorithm enables all packets on the network to be instantly analysed and prioritised in terms of mission critical importance, intelligently filtering out all unwanted, suspicious and non-essential traffic to ensure optimum network performance for your most important users.

[Jie Bie]

Can any techies, especially Matt_Berr as I used his advice about visiting the site before T day, please explain my T day experience to me in simple terms as complete technophobe here.

I had 2 browsers Firefox and IE with one tab each, but was mainly trying with firefox.

Was hitting F5 and was not really achieving anything. Not hardly getting the holding page just a white screen saying your connection need to be reset, I got this message a lot. (this was on firefox) When I got this message I just kept F5ing. Was this the right thing to do?

This would then sometimes take me back to the holding page, where I would keep F5ing and the same thing would keep happening. White screen with message connection needing to be reset and then the occasional holding page.

From the sounds of this was my IP address blocked? Was my F5ing classed as flooding See.

Did I have a bad CHARM rating, even though I had regularly visited the site before the Sale

Would love all you with knowledge to be able to tell me if I was doing the right thing? Told you I was a technophobe:)

Edited October 8, 2013 by Jie Bie

[brixesmith]

Hi, I don't want to make anyone feel bad, and I have been in your shoes (and I think from experience there's every chance you'll get tickets in a resale), but am I just really really lucky then? Because once I got onto the holding page and just started f5ing the page just refreshed quickly every time (within a second), and I got through to buy tickets within about 5-10 minutes. One tab on firefox, another tab open on chrome that I left to auto-refresh, two iphones that were all left to auto-refresh. I didn't have a white page after the first half an hour. I then found out some friends didn't have tickets and was able to get through again (this time after about 5 minutes of refreshing) and get them tickets also. This is the first time I've attempted to buy using this PC/IP, I'm on O2 but I'm not aware of having a particularly fast broadband connection or PC. I did as matt_berr suggested and visited the seetickets page (and all the links that were being bandied about) a few times in the preceding days, and I was ctrl+F5ing, not just F5ing, as I know that's a force refresh in IE (I think) so doesn't reload the cache though not sure if it also does that in Firefox.

If there's anything about my set up that would have made me more likely to get through I'd be glad to share it if it helps others get hold of tickets in the resales.

[fightoffyour]

Or just not dick around and act like a suspicious ip?

Stop trying to selfishly gain an unfair advantage?

[fightoffyour]

It does make me laugh how there's massive assumptions being made.

From the posts made here there appears to be lots of people who got success by using the same IP but a different computer to one they'd been trying previously.

Given that those posts fit half of your scenario, how do you know that the IP address was the factor that swung it and not simply using a 'fresh' browser?

Scientific analysis only works if you actually do scientific analysis, rather than making something up out of only guesses.

Edited October 8, 2013 by fightoffyour

[rogeri54]

So if I understand this right just pressing F5 didn't help because it was going to a cached page but pressing Ctrl and F5 would have helped. Does this explain why people were able to get to the registration screen again and again because the cached page was being remembered

[rogeri54]

So if I understand this right just pressing F5 didn't help because it was going to a cached page but pressing Ctrl and F5 would have helped. Does this explain why people were able to get to the registration screen again and again because the cached page was being remembered

[brixesmith]

So if I understand this right just pressing F5 didn't help because it was going to a cached page but pressing Ctrl and F5 would have helped. Does this explain why people were able to get to the registration screen again and again because the cached page was being remembered

[parsonjack]

scientific analysis:

1. Can't load seetickets.com at midday.

2. VPN to university

3. Can load seetickets.com

4. Disconnect VPN

5. Can't load seetickets.com

Repeat on 2nd computer.

[Pinhead]

In general terms that really is a bit sh!t isn't it ? Considering that scumbag touts probably use the site on a very regular basis but many genuine random punters probably only very occasionally ... the scumbags can technically end up with higher priority ! Not to mention that some poor b*gger is bound to end up with a dynamic IP sooner rather than later that someone else has previously done something or other to gain it a 'bad' reputation. Having got past once you're presumably slightly more likely to be able to get past again and also there's probably the ability to manually blacklist/whitelist IPs as required which is very much open to abuse.

OK, little of the above is really that applicable to Glasto tix so it's probably all somewhat irrelevant in the great scheme of things. If it's been set up sensibly then any effect on a casual genuine user ought to be negligible unless they're somehow trying to gain an advantage by potentially abusing the network. It's also no doubt a highly tweakable system in any case so it may not work exactly as has been described or implied in See's case anyway ... but for various reasons, effectively setting a priority for accessing a commercial site based on previous use of the site just seems a pretty sh!t approach IMHO. It all sounds very loosely on par with the likes of Ironport and Postini et al and we no doubt all know just how 100% reliable spam filtering is and that false positives never happen and all that don't we There can't be any doubt that DDoS protection is an important and necessary thing to have in place but it's the problem of getting the detection threshold 'right' and more to the point avoiding false positives that really matters. Long-term historic use or abuse of the site shouldn't really come into the equation too much (if at all) because it's quite simply NOT a good or even reasonable indicator of current intentions.

BTW, not a dig at Mr.matt_berr who posted the various info about the Junos system. It's an interesting read and I'll be even more interested to see his thoughts on how to potentially improve your IP rating etc in due course In particular, finding out how to get my IP on a sneaky whitelist somewhere that guarantees >100% priority would be even better of course

[parsonjack]

I'll just point out that See are able to process sales faster than that. They did so last year, and on a smaller system hardware-wise.

The sales are deliberately "throttled", to make the sale take place over a pre-decided timescale.

(I've been told this by bosses at both See and GF).

[Pinhead]

Virgin Media hosted servers (virtual machines) as well I believe, for flexible short term capacity required for big ticket jobs like Glasto.

[clarkete]

funny thing....luck.

[eFestivals]

scientific analysis:

1. Can't load seetickets.com at midday.

2. VPN to university

3. Can load seetickets.com

4. Disconnect VPN

5. Can't load seetickets.com

Repeat on 2nd computer.

which proves absolutely zilch, nor even suggests anything.

Some people are always getting the site when many people are not.

[clarkete]

which proves absolutely zilch, nor even suggests anything.

Some people are always getting the site when many people are not.

[eFestivals]

You keep saying that Neil, but what about my bit

it's a very similar thing, the same can easily apply.

The point is that some people were always getting thru, so the fact of getting thru only mirrors what we know was happening anyway.

[clarkete]

I'm only saying that, whatever you and some of the other folks have written about luck or other factors, I did prove that my IP was not getting to seetickets.

I don't know what was blocking it, as icmp wasn't going through so I couldn't do a tracert or a pathping and I foolishly didn't think to try it earlier, although to be honest you get so nervous that any action you take will sods law be at the critical time and ruin your only chance to get to the queue

[eFestivals]

I'm only saying that, whatever you and some of the other folks have written about luck or other factors, I did prove that my IP was not getting to seetickets.

No, you only proved that you couldn't get a response at the time you tried.

Everything else is speculation. Your speculation might be right, but it might not be either.

[clarkete]

No, you only proved that you couldn't get a response at the time you tried.

Everything else is speculation. Your speculation might be right, but it might not be either.

[Jie Bie]

it's a very similar thing, the same can easily apply.

The point is that some people were always getting thru, so the fact of getting thru only mirrors what we know was happening anyway.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Jie Bie

[clarkete]

I was even sad enough to have recorded the working IP, just in case you could find the non-working one in your log of my posts from before 11am, in case I needed to pass it on to them for checking their FW logs.

[eFestivals]

Well not really, performing tests and then forming a conclusion based on the results is how I test stuff. I'm sure you do that with this site, that's how you know what does and doesn't work.

I've been doing it since you were in short trousers - you know in your twenties

That method only works if you know the status of what you're testing against, otherwise all you have are guesses.

I'm happy to admit that it sounds a more reasonable guess than most of the other guesses that have been made, but it's still a guess. It's not the level of proof.

From what you've said (tho there might be more that you tested that you've not said) it might have been nothing more than your router playing up, for example.

Edited October 8, 2013 by eFestivals

[clarkete]

That method only works if you know the status of what you're testing against, otherwise all you have are guesses.

I'm happy to admit that it sounds a more reasonable guess than most of the other guesses that have been made, but it's still a guess. It's not the level of proof.

From what you've said (tho there might be more that you tested that you've not said) it might have been nothing more than your router playing up, for example.

[stardustjunkie]

My boyfriend is far more knowledgable on this kind of stuff than me, he does programming for a living for one.. He ran some kind of test while we were trying for tickets because I was capable of getting to the holding page and easily refreshing it whereas he couldn't even get that far. Whatever the test was that he did, it claimed that his IP was being blocked. Once he went on to a proxy, he got on to the holding page no problem.

We eventually got tickets, so I'm not saying that out of spite or because I was unlucky, I'm just passing on what genuinely happened.

I don't think you can argue something that you can't confirm. You can choose not to believe what I'm saying, which is fine. I saw it with my own eyes and because of that I believe that there were issues with certain IP addresses being blocked, whether that was an intentional move from See or something going wrong between us and See, who knows!