blocked IPs

[Pazzler]

Unlike previous years, where multiple clients and browsers would've increased your chances, now it could work to your detriment. Agree?

Apart from the countless anecdotal "evidence" on here, I personally know of no one who succeeded. All (20+over various locations) were using more than one device, but all had a single outward-facing IP.

The only 2 people I personally know to have succeeded managed after a last ditch attempt, one by VPN, one by 3G; both straight in.

Previously we've all always managed to secure tickets for all in our parties.

matt_berr hit the nail on the head regarding the webscreens.

Folk were not just being "unlucky" they were constantly being dropped/held down the line in reward for their fervent refreshing, misconstrued as a bot in favour of average humanistic behaviour.

The thing is, do you have the will power to scale back and sit on your hands come 2nd chance Sunday?!

edit- I failed to mention that this was qualified by two different employees at See

Edited October 11, 2013 by Pazzler

[russycarps]

I just cant believe that hammering F5 is the reason we didnt get tickets.

Surely most people who were successful in getting tickets were hammering F5?

[Pazzler]

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.

[Pazzler]

I just cant believe that hammering F5 is the reason we didnt get tickets.

Surely most people who were successful in getting tickets were hammering F5?

[russycarps]

I agree. But it seems the more devices x multiple browsers hitting from one IP becomes a trigger for webscreen appliance.

[kk1977]

I was doing exactly the same without success. Also an ipad connected to wifi.

I got through fairly easily last year but not a sniff this year. Couldn't get past holding page.

I did have exactly the same problem trying for tickets in the main sale for 2011 too. That year it was over 4 hours of constant refreshing without success. Managed in resale that year.

Probably just bad luck this year.

[parsonjack]

hmmm....i had one laptop with IE9 running multiple tabs (x6) displayed across the screen as Quick Tabs refreshing themselves on the holding page. I had another laptop (on the same router) with 6 x IE9 browsers open manually refreshing with F5 cycling through as each browser went back to the holding page.

I didn't hammer F5 but waited for the page to load or timeout.....and I got at least 3 registration pages up on the laptop with manual refreshing over a 15 minute period, plus 3 registration pages that loaded simultaneously on the laptop with tabs (thereby supporting the theory over tabs all using the same session).

If there was some blocking going on it didn't affect me.....could it be related to the speed you hit F5? There seems to be plenty of people who seem to have been 'hammering' F5 relentlessly, rather than waiting for a page load or timeout before hitting it again......

[fightoffyour]

I just cant believe that hammering F5 is the reason we didnt get tickets.

Surely most people who were successful in getting tickets were hammering F5?

Edited October 11, 2013 by fightoffyour

[frostypaw]

I hope they were blocking just like that

Sickens me that people will decide they're more important than others so they deserve better chances - 20 plus chances for one person, hell yes chuck them out - everyone deserves the same chance. No bonuses for buying faster computers, or working in a company with it's own network or vpn, nor for knowing lots about it

Equal chances for the it working rich geek with twenty computers and for the single mom who can't afford more than their phone

Go on tell me I'm a dick and why someone deserves a better chance than others?

I hope they perfect the system next year.

[Calvin Klein]

I just had chrome and firefox open on my pc, one tab on each and was hitting F5 on each as fast as I could. It certainly seemed like I was somehow being blocked from the pages, it was very different from previous years when you at least felt like the page was trying to load, before crashing.

Something was different about this year, thats for sure

[LondonTom]

Can we stop with the insults towards IT workers please?

I hope they were blocking just like that

Sickens me that people will decide they're more important than others so they deserve better chances - 20 plus chances for one person, hell yes chuck them out - everyone deserves the same chance. No bonuses for buying faster computers, or working in a company with it's own network or vpn, nor for knowing lots about it

Equal chances for the it working rich geek with twenty computers and for the single mom who can't afford more than their phone

Go on tell me I'm a dick and why someone deserves a better chance than others?

I hope they perfect the system next year.

Edited October 11, 2013 by LondonTom

[DeanoL]

I hope they were blocking just like that

Sickens me that people will decide they're more important than others so they deserve better chances - 20 plus chances for one person, hell yes chuck them out - everyone deserves the same chance. No bonuses for buying faster computers, or working in a company with it's own network or vpn, nor for knowing lots about it.

[Redwinevino]

I hope they were blocking just like that

Sickens me that people will decide they're more important than others so they deserve better chances - 20 plus chances for one person, hell yes chuck them out - everyone deserves the same chance. No bonuses for buying faster computers, or working in a company with it's own network or vpn, nor for knowing lots about it

Equal chances for the it working rich geek with twenty computers and for the single mom who can't afford more than their phone

Go on tell me I'm a dick and why someone deserves a better chance than others?

I hope they perfect the system next year.

Edited October 11, 2013 by Redwinevino

[dan05delaney]

Can we stop with the insults towards IT workers please?

[frostypaw]

Saying that you're cheating is nothing against IT workers - I don't think cheating is a requirement of being an IT worker, I used to be one.

Unless you have one tab open and waited for the 20 second timer each time you are in no place to say anything

[MadFrankie]

My story is similar to many here. I am somewhat computer / Internet savvy and have always got tickets for the past 7 years. This year, my home pc never got past 'page cannot be displayed' yet when I got a VPN to work and tried I immediately got to the holding page, and the same on my phone. Alas I tried this too late and didn't get tickets.

So are we all effectively saying that the only real way forward, with all of the seetickets tech they now use, is to open one browser, one tab and let it refresh from the page and sit on your hands until it hopefully goes in?

So, Glastonbury ticket purchasing has just become a total lottery?

I for one take Glastonbury as my favourite holiday of the year, I have been every time for the past 7 and would do anything to get a ticket. So I spend time and effort looking for ways to make the chance of getting tickets more likely by spending time on excellent forums like this one, prepping my ticket day effort as much as possible. Is this cheating or just being efficient and preparing the best I can to get something I want?

In every walk of life this is seen of as getting something you want, I'm not blocking anyone else forcefully, just trying to get ahead. Surely if you are prepared to spend time to get a ticket then it shows you really want to go rather than someone who 'might fancy going' when the time comes. I know which person I'd rather to have at Glastonbury, after all it's a special festival.

If it is now a total lottery to get a ticket I think Glastonbury is in danger of losing that continuity of the hard core festival goers that help pass on the glasto ethos and make it the festival what it is today.

[jameshunt]

I don't think any of the pre-sale advice said to never manually refresh your browser page. There were warnings that multiple tabs can confuse the purchasing process (due to them all effectively being the same session). But no one officially stated that you had to wait the 20 seconds for the autorefresh to do its bit.

I think that if IP addresses appeared to be blocked then there could be a number of reasons for that:

1) They weren't blocked at all, but some people got lucky and others didn't. Not getting a page to load meant that some thought they'd got blocked somehow.

2) Seetickets IT issue for the first 20+ minutes of the sale could have resulted in browsers or people's PCs/Macs etc. caching the fact that that address was not responding and eventually gave up on even trying, just returning the same server not available message.

3) Some people were trying multiple browsers with multiple tabs each and manually refreshing like demons. If the frequency of such attempts were more than a certain threshold then either your ISP and/or Seetickets systems could have seen that as either a denial of service attempt or a scripted attack/attempt to buy tickets and temporarily locked out those IP addresses (which would affect any computer using that same IP address).

Anecdotal: We got tickets. I manually refreshed the holding page as soon as it returned to it, but didn't hit manual refresh again until my browser reloaded that holding page with the 20 second timer on it. So was probably hitting refresh every second or two. That to me would have come across as a genuine user trying to buy tickets, rather than someone hammering their system with automated scripts or attempts to bring the service down.

Just my views. Mostly it would have been down to luck, but brute force attempts (or attempts that appeared to be brute force) may have been locked out - either by your ISP or by Seetickets. One thing to bear in mind is the complexity of the network between your computer and the Seetickets server farm. All along the way there will be various hardware and software solutions to ensure load balancing, security, availability etc. of the systems. If any of those automated checks and balances spotted unusual activity then your connection could be terminated or not allowed through in the first place. That said, the bottom line is that there would have been at least four or five people trying for every one ticket available, so the majority were going to be disappointed even with a perfectly working system.

[snoopyhill]

I hope they were blocking just like that

Sickens me that people will decide they're more important than others so they deserve better chances - 20 plus chances for one person, hell yes chuck them out - everyone deserves the same chance. No bonuses for buying faster computers, or working in a company with it's own network or vpn, nor for knowing lots about it

Equal chances for the it working rich geek with twenty computers and for the single mom who can't afford more than their phone

Go on tell me I'm a dick and why someone deserves a better chance than others?

I hope they perfect the system next year.

Edited October 12, 2013 by droopysnoopy

[brixesmith]

2) Seetickets IT issue for the first 20+ minutes of the sale could have resulted in browsers or people's PCs/Macs etc. caching the fact that that address was not responding and eventually gave up on even trying, just returning the same server not available message.

[frostypaw]

Does the single mum example you used have the same chance as a group of friends with six computers? Surely if you are part of a group you are using an advantage that is not available to all or is that different to a single person with 6 devices?