blocked IPs

[Calvin Klein]

Isn't it a bit weird that I (and many others) could hammer F5 and reload the holding page at the rate of once per second (once the initial problems were resolved at 9.30 anyway) but some others couldn't do this. (including, from what I've heard, yourself).

That doesn't sound like luck or random chance to me - it sounds like something was wrong with those users machines or connections. What that something was, is anyones guess of course.

Taking it a bit further, imagine one buyer had two machines and on one of them he could refresh once per second but the other one he could barely get the holding page. Is that "luck" or a sign that something was up with the second machine?

Edit to add: I fully accept that for those of us who hit refresh once per second for the duration of the sale it was down to pure luck whether or not you got a "buy tickets" screen up - I just am questioning whether it was just due to bad luck why some users don't seem to have been able to even try to do this.

[clarkete]

Whatever happened, it will certainly make things exciting next time around.

And of course, the most important thing is being able to share your useful info with the other gimps on your local festival site

[eFestivals]

But I didn't reset the router, just disconnected it from dsl (where I was still happily connecting to your site and my webmail successfully) and then reconnected it.

Honestly I'm saying it's one of the most conclusive tests I've ever performed in terms of the impact of that, to such a degree I thought "you twat, why didn't you think to try that at ten o'clock when they still had tickets"

You say that you tried it after it had sold out - so it might be down to your timing, and nothing more.

I didn't see a page until after it was sold out - but with no need to re-start anything. Suddenly it just started working, very likely at the point that the word was spreading that it was sold out so people stopped trying and the load on the server came down.

You were doing quite well till that point, you'd put forwards the best argument so far and I was starting to think you might have something.

Now however...

Edited October 8, 2013 by eFestivals

[marketsqhero]

I didn't see a page until after it was sold out - but with no need to re-start anything. Suddenly it just started working, very likely at the point that the word was spreading that it was sold out so people stopped trying and the load on the server came down.

You were doing quite well till that point, you'd put forwards the best argument so far and I was starting to think you might have something.

Now however...

Edited October 8, 2013 by marketsqhero

[majormajormajor]

seetickets block ICMP request btw.

[clarkete]

You say that you tried it after it had sold out - so it might be down to your timing, and nothing more.

I didn't see a page until after it was sold out - but with no need to re-start anything. Suddenly it just started working, very likely at the point that the word was spreading that it was sold out so people stopped trying and the load on the server came down.

You were doing quite well till that point, you'd put forwards the best argument so far and I was starting to think you might have something.

Now however...

[eFestivals]

Hey look, I tried to elicit your tech support at that time - it was about 11am so 30 mins after people had written on these forums that they were sold out.. You were apparently "busy" with some airy fairy busiest day of the year nonsense or other

/topic/181173-sunday-6th-sale-post-backdoor-urls-in-this-thread-if-you-get-through/page-23#entry4149114">http://www.efestivals.co.uk/forums/topic/181173-sunday-6th-sale-post-backdoor-urls-in-this-thread-if-you-get-through/page-23#entry4149114

happy to check them for you now, if you can direct-link me to a post of yours before you reset.

edit: but that only tells you that you have a different IP address. It doesn't tell you that that different IP address had any relevance.

And particularly as your test was when the server was responding to everyone anyway.

The thing is, at the end of the day, a blocked IP and an unresponsive server look identical to the end user, so it would take some pretty substantive testing to get evidence enough to prove it from testing.

As I've said at several points, I don't fully dismiss the possibility that something went on to affect people's ability to connect but there's so many possibilities - including a variety of different ones across everyone - for what it could be that none are coming out particularly strongly to my mind.

It does seem to be the case that a 'fresh' browser (perhaps on a different machine, so perhaps because of IP - but not always from at least one post i've seen) at a time down the line gave a better chance. But I don't think that there's any particularly strong evidence for the why that might have been.

Edited October 8, 2013 by eFestivals

[clarkete]

Just to say, I'm not discussing this because I want or expect anything to happen, just wanted to share my observations with other folks who experienced that same specific issue, which was "Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to Glastonbury.seetickets.com" or the Firefox equivalent. I stopped using IE because I didn't get to see a queue page last year in either sale or resale, but other folks on here with Chrome had not had the same issues.

This was before I disconnected it - /topic/181173-sunday-6th-sale-post-backdoor-urls-in-this-thread-if-you-get-through/page-21#entry4148761">http://www.efestivals.co.uk/forums/topic/181173-sunday-6th-sale-post-backdoor-urls-in-this-thread-if-you-get-through/page-21#entry4148761

This was after I disconnected it - /topic/181173-sunday-6th-sale-post-backdoor-urls-in-this-thread-if-you-get-through/page-22#entry4148881">http://www.efestivals.co.uk/forums/topic/181173-sunday-6th-sale-post-backdoor-urls-in-this-thread-if-you-get-through/page-22#entry4148881

[eFestivals]

yeah, they were different.

Which has proved only that you tried on two different IPs and were successful on one of them, but nothing about the 'why' of that.

Given what you've said, the 'success' was most likely to be due to the server load dropping because it had sold out by the time you got the connection on the 2nd IP.

[fightoffyour]

funny thing....luck.

[fightoffyour]

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]

when whoever does so clearly haven't understood what I'm saying happened.

I'm not disputing that you couldn't get on.

But it only appears to be you that was locked out for 2 hours, when just about everyone else who hadn't seen a page all morning was seeing them within minutes of the sold out signs going up.

Given that your own difficulties appear to be unique against everyone else's, there stands a good chance that the problem you encountered was unique too.

[LondonTom]

I'm not disputing that you couldn't get on.

But it only appears to be you that was locked out for 2 hours, when just about everyone else who hadn't seen a page all morning was seeing them within minutes of the sold out signs going up.

[Penrhos]

I resorted to the old ipconfig /flushdns trick & a reboot of my router before starting the quest. I even turned off windows firewall & anti-virus to be on the safe side.

out of three different PC's I have only the windows 8 PC got through and that was the only one resolving 218 for seetickets the two others didn't get a look in until the sold out screen went up and even then it was 20 minutes later.

Fortunately I'd got the tickets I needed on the other one.

[jeffie]

Windows firewall? I didn't get to any screens on my home pc until I turned this off. VPN via work on a laptop however was flying after 10.00

[Penrhos]

I'm still working through a massive wireshark log I took during the Thursday sale to see if I can spot anything that could explain the weird behaviour as I was getting the holding page not refreshing for the entire sale.

I haven't even looked at the one I took from Sunday yet.

Netmon & wireshark are your friends when trying to work this stuff out.

[majormajormajor]

What were you spanning with wireshark? The PC or your WAN?

[clarkete]

yeah, they were different.

Which has proved only that you tried on two different IPs and were successful on one of them, but nothing about the 'why' of that.

Given what you've said, the 'success' was most likely to be due to the server load dropping because it had sold out by the time you got the connection on the 2nd IP.

[bamber]

IP you had on the inside of the company's network may have been different but surely you wouldn't have had 10 different outside addresses?

[artl]

something to note: icmp will be dropped in times of network hardship. I find it fascinating that somebody is trawling through WS dumps ... blimey

[rogeri54]

Interesting e-mail from the festival office - Not sure I believe them though

We had metrics in place to monitor access after a completed booking, and each attempt went back to the busy page - not to the booking page,

As explained by the site development team: if the user clicks back a few times after booking, they will be able to see the ‘first’ page of the booking process due to browser caching – but then when they submit their second set of details, they will be sent back to the busy page just the same as everyone else.

Whilst there are some anecdotal quotes from people who claim they were able to do so, the monitoring that was carried out suggest those people are just astonishingly lucky.

F5 vs Ctrl + F5 – there is no difference here, both options do the same thing on this system.

[artl]

what the booking office has said is exactly what happened to me. browser cache - unable to resubmit additional names then banged out.

[brixesmith]

Interesting. I'm not normally 'astonishingly lucky', quite the opposite! Having said that, I didn't win the lottery on Saturday!

[majormajormajor]

something to note: icmp will be dropped in times of network hardship. I find it fascinating that somebody is trawling through WS dumps ... blimey

[dan05delaney]

Interesting e-mail from the festival office - Not sure I believe them though

We had metrics in place to monitor access after a completed booking, and each attempt went back to the busy page - not to the booking page,

As explained by the site development team: if the user clicks back a few times after booking, they will be able to see the ‘first’ page of the booking process due to browser caching – but then when they submit their second set of details, they will be sent back to the busy page just the same as everyone else.

Whilst there are some anecdotal quotes from people who claim they were able to do so, the monitoring that was carried out suggest those people are just astonishingly lucky.

F5 vs Ctrl + F5 – there is no difference here, both options do the same thing on this system.