Refreshinator

[parsonjack]

4 hours ago, EamerRed said:

I'd be amazed if this was the first year that SeeTickets were using CloudFront and/or any kind of load balancers. I don't see how anything has changed IT-wise this year in comparison to last year in all honesty. Though having said that, how would we know!

Just Google 'Seetickets Riverbed'.....plenty of evidence to show that See have been using load-balancing technology for years....

[mungo57]

my GF downloaded refreshinator as she read an article mentioning it, shoulda seen the look on her face just now when I told her using it might get our tickets blocked! She wants her £1.49 back now!

[Stu H]

2 hours ago, Scruffylovemonster said:

In what way?

 

It crashed after the reg pages. Quite a lot on the payment page. It shouldn't. It should have been designed in such a way that only those successful getting to the reg input details, then get an easy flow through to completion, not competing again with 1 million people every click

[gizmoman]

5 hours ago, Stu H said:

Because they're using CloudFront as their CDN.

Go onto their homepage and CTRL + U and you'll see it in the Source Code.

It's an AWS product:   https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/ 

 

 

Loads of info here:   https://d3c3cq33003psk.cloudfront.net/opentag-138157-seetickets.js 

t.src="//s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/opentag/opentag

Ah you mean Seetickets homepage, glastonbury.seetickets.com seem to me to use cloudflare. but I'm no expert.

[EamerRed]

55 minutes ago, parsonjack said:

Just Google 'Seetickets Riverbed'.....plenty of evidence to show that See have been using load-balancing technology for years....

Yeah exactly, any website of a decent size should be. SeeTickets should be right up there traffic-wise on Glasto weekend.

[Pinhead]

They used servers hosted on Virgin's network two years ago iirc, which may have actually been part of Virgin's cloud server offering at the time rather than just their corporate connectivity provider. Makes sense as they probably don't need the capacity all the time. Move to AWS maybe just a financial one more than anything, unless they specifically wanted to use one of their systems like CloudFront (which looks like it can be used even if they chose to host with other service providers; not necessarily fixed to AWS). I wonder if the load balancing and session managers are now part of the AWS offering as well...

" log files for 150,000,000 hits would be a bit over 40gb "

Depends what you log I would think - just logging IP's might keep it this low, but they are not much use without other session data I would have thought for any forensics post-sale about what type of client people were using.

Either way - as has been said above - the more that you look like a system rather than a person trying to F5 your way to ticket nirvana, the more that the possibility of being 'filtered out' and cast into the well of the ticketless souls you become....

 

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

So, to conclude;

[parsonjack]

1 hour ago, Pinhead said:

They used servers hosted on Virgin's network two years ago iirc

 

The IP's resolved by glastonbury.seetickets.com still appear to be owned by Virgin Media....which I think are the 3 x load-balancers.  I'd be surprised if the back end itself is hosted elsewhere other than on Virgin servers.

There is also what I believe to be a DR capability which sits behind 2 x IP's owned by Exponential-e

Not sure how this relates to the AWS hosting though.....

[Pinhead]

Like I suggested before, See may have bought the SaaS solution of CloudFront, but this is pointing to another facility in this case still with Virgin...?

[Pinhead]

Either way, its still F5 parkinsons on the day ;)

[kalifire]

I'm out of my depth among the techies here, but surely if they were going to block people using apps like this, they'd do so before anybody managed to get through? Once through, it becomes a lot more difficult because they'd have to work out 1) which of the tens of thousands of orders used it, and 2) apply that block to every registration on the transaction, meaning many will be blocked through no fault of their own.

I suspect that if you use it and get through to the booking page, you're probably good (not ethically, but ticket-wise). As others have mentioned, the thing to do - if you were so inclined - would be to use it for a separate 4G connection, while it's business as usual for the laptop. If it gets through before you do, there's the dilemma. Book using that? Or carry on trying?

[morph100]

Potentially blocked, blacklisted or frozen easily identifiable by the way it connects (different header) I'm not going to risk it even on a spare phone.

really hope it doesn't work today...

[Sawdusty surfer]

1 hour ago, morph100 said:

 

really hope it doesn't work today...

If does work today (and works well) and is widely reported as such, I suspect that the app is going to get ahuge number of downloads in the next couple of days.

[VolumetricFox]

19 hours ago, mungo57 said:

my GF downloaded refreshinator as she read an article mentioning it, shoulda seen the look on her face just now when I told her using it might get our tickets blocked! She wants her £1.49 back now!

 

Getting a refund is fairly easy: http://www.imore.com/how-to-get-refund-itunes-app-store

The developer loses out as the cut Apple take off the sale, they keep.

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

I fully expect to hear a roughly equal amount of reports saying "Refreshinator worked for me!" or "Refreshinator was total shit" Just like there always is with home broadband or 3G.

[mungo57]

12 minutes ago, nodolphie said:

Getting a refund is fairly easy: http://www.imore.com/how-to-get-refund-itunes-app-store

The developer loses out as the cut Apple take off the sale, they keep.

lol I managed to convince her it wasn't worth the hassle for £1.49 but thanks anyway

[Keithy]

1 hour ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

I fully expect to hear a roughly equal amount of reports saying "Refreshinator worked for me!" or "Refreshinator was total shit" Just like there always is with home broadband or 3G.

Yep! 'I got through instantly, made such a difference, definitely worked' and 'never saw the booking page using it, it was shit'

[Jamie D]

The problem with refresihnator is that the makers have got absolutely no way to test that it will work for the purpose they claim it works for.

On the flipside, seetickets are perfectly able to test how it works and there's every possibility they will be able to block it.

If there was a Chrome add-on that refreshes a tab at random intervals and then stops and alerts you when it has changed (i.e. the ticket page comes up) then that would be the thing to go for. Does it exist?........ if not then I might need to start brushing up on my Chrome add-on development skills.

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

I guess it wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility for somebody to create and app that not only refreshes at random timescales (say 1-3 seconds) but crucially didn't refresh until the actual holding page had fully reloaded, and then refreshed the page at the random interval.

[FestiZebra]

31 minutes ago, Jamie D said:

The problem with refresihnator is that the makers have got absolutely no way to test that it will work for the purpose they claim it works for.

On the flipside, seetickets are perfectly able to test how it works and there's every possibility they will be able to block it.

If there was a Chrome add-on that refreshes a tab at random intervals and then stops and alerts you when it has changed (i.e. the ticket page comes up) then that would be the thing to go for. Does it exist?........ if not then I might need to start brushing up on my Chrome add-on development skills.

I have tried one called refresh monkey, it didn't work but I have only tried it on one occasion!

[unclegorilla]

38 minutes ago, Jamie D said:

The problem with refresihnator is that the makers have got absolutely no way to test that it will work for the purpose they claim it works for.

On the flipside, seetickets are perfectly able to test how it works and there's every possibility they will be able to block it.

If there was a Chrome add-on that refreshes a tab at random intervals and then stops and alerts you when it has changed (i.e. the ticket page comes up) then that would be the thing to go for. Does it exist?........ if not then I might need to start brushing up on my Chrome add-on development skills.

I tried the refreshinator for Stone Roses tickets, it stopped refreshing as soon as the page changed, i.e. once it changed to the booking page. Bottom line - it works.

[morph100]

38 minutes ago, unclegorilla said:

I tried the refreshinator for Stone Roses tickets, it stopped refreshing as soon as the page changed, i.e. once it changed to the booking page. Bottom line - it works.

It worked for that, might not work for this, they might block it

[kalifire]

11 minutes ago, morph100 said:

It worked for that, might not work for this, they might block it

Given the makers have essentially marketed this for Glastonbury, both the festival and See will be well aware of it. If it's within See's power to disable it, I'd imagine they would, although I'd be surprised if people were blocked. I'd imagine it'll simply divert to a page that advises them not to use multi-hit software and to try again without it.

Is anyone planning on using this tonight?

[Pinhead]

Would be interested to see what the outcome is. Like other here, I expect it will be a 'worked for me'  / 'didn't work for me' split that will prove nothing about whether it makes a difference or not. In any case, if everyone downloaded this app, wouldn't we all be essentially back to a level playing field for potential success anyway...?

[Brave Sir Robin]

Just now, Pinhead said:

Would be interested to see what the outcome is. Like other here, I expect it will be a 'worked for me'  / 'didn't work for me' split that will prove nothing about whether it makes a difference or not. In any case, if everyone downloaded this app, wouldn't we all be essentially back to a level playing field for potential success anyway...?

Real question, assuming they don't block it, is whether the Festival follows through on its promise in the T&Cs that @kalifire highlighted previously:

"Glastonbury Festival will cancel all bookings made using multi-hit software or applications to ensure everyone has a fair and equal chance of getting a ticket."