Anyone else think the website was worse this year?

[Mollyanne&Mike]

It appeared harder this year to get past the Error to the holding page this year.
 

Laptop out performed my iPad and iPhone. They couldn’t get near the site ..... is there something awry with Apple equipment and Glastonbury, I have the same thing each year.

[DJ Cull]

4 hours ago, OrganicShamanic said:

Because you have been allocated a cookie which directs you to a server operating within it's capacity. At this point all your requests were probably successfully responded to in less than 2 seconds, unless that server then gets allocated too many sessions, at which point it will also start timing out. That happened occasionally, but mostly once you had a good server, you were making successful requests.

The sucker is, if you were unlucky enough to be allocated an over-loaded server, all your future requests would also be directed there. Hence never even seeing the holding page.

A fresh request with no cookies would get a new server allocation.

It appeared as though a lot of the servers were over-loaded, especially for the first 20 minutes. If you were not seeing the holding page, you weren't even making successful requests.
 

How do we get out of that cycle if it happens in the resale? Is there any easy way to get allocated a new cookie?

[Dronx]

55 minutes ago, Mollyanne&Mike said:

It appeared harder this year to get past the Error to the holding page this year.
 

Laptop out performed my iPad and iPhone. They couldn’t get near the site ..... is there something awry with Apple equipment and Glastonbury, I have the same thing each year.

I had the opposite happen. My laptop was useless and got them on my iPad. 

[gigpusher]

Seems to have been less smooth when you got through this year. I wish they operated some kind of timer system once you got through so that tickets were held for x amount of minutes while you fill in details. I managed to get all details in but still not successful and that feels almost worse than if you didn't get through in the first place. Part of me wonders if we had been in a smaller group would I have tickets now. 

[Zoo Music Girl]

What was that tweet all about? I felt slightly reassured when I saw that that if they were only halfway gone the sale was going slower than normal... which it clearly wasn't.

This year has been one of my worst experiences I think. In a team of three on Thursday, with one other person trying as well, and in a team of six today. None of us got a sniff. I had holding page on occasion but even that would time out to server errors for half the time so it didn't even seem to me that once you got the holding page you were guaranteed to keep it.

I've had shockers in the past, though. I think the sale for 2016 was worse but put that down to the shit rural wi-fi at my in-laws! That said I was in the same place for 2019 and dreading it, but we got through then so who the fuck knows?

[Zoo Music Girl]

Should also say special thanks to @billum who tried for my lot when they were sorted. Unfortunately I believe it sold out just as the details went in

Edited October 6, 2019 by Zoo Music Girl

[LondonTom]

It seemed worse to me this year, got the holding page on my mobile (using 4G)  after about 15 minutes...and my desktop got it about 30 minutes in when I turned my VPN on.

I don't think there is any advantage anyone can make themselves but I am starting something is going on with the network routing as some people seem to get in year after year quickly and constantly while other people barely even get the holding page in years...

[billum]

1 minute ago, LondonTom said:

I don't think there is any advantage anyone can make themselves but I am starting something is going on with the network routing as some people seem to get in year after year quickly and constantly while other people barely even get the holding page in years...

But, sorry to sound like a smart-arse, that is also exactly what you'd see if it was truly random...

[august1]

38 minutes ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

What was that tweet all about? I felt slightly reassured when I saw that that if they were only halfway gone the sale was going slower than normal... which it clearly wasn't.

I think it was just over half sold out but pretty much all the available tickets were pretty much taken as people battled the server to proceed with the reg details/payment.

I had half an eye on here and there wasn't many success stories then at 20 past it seamed to explode.

[Zoo Music Girl]

Just now, august1 said:

I think it was just over half sold out but pretty much all the available tickets were pretty much taken as people battled the server to proceed with the reg details/payment.

I had half an eye on here and there wasn't many success stories then at 20 past it seamed to explode.

That makes sense actually.

[DyatlovReturns]

2 hours ago, Mollyanne&Mike said:

It appeared harder this year to get past the Error to the holding page this year.
 

Laptop out performed my iPad and iPhone. They couldn’t get near the site ..... is there something awry with Apple equipment and Glastonbury, I have the same thing each year.

Only got tickets thanks to a girl in our group on a Mac. We went to our labs to leach the fast internet there. Guy in a physics lab had the highest speeds (insane numbers) and didn't even hit the holding page. I don't understand any of it.

[Pollyloucamper]

5 hours ago, Steel city camper said:

I got in and added all the registrations but when I clicked proceed it crashed, I went back several times and it kept crashing when I hit proceed.  Thankfully someone else got ours but would've been hugely disappointing if that had scuppered my chance.

Same situation with the crashing and back in till I got to payment stage and put details in and then something along the lines of sorry but you've timed out and kicked me off. Pretty much started again but somehow, it had gone through. We didn't know this though and this meant that somebody else in our group was locked out because they were trying to get for us. Obviously, I feel terrible but I didn't think I had the tickets and therefore didn't notify the group. All a bit bittersweet as a result. 

[OrganicShamanic]

2 hours ago, DJ Cull said:

How do we get out of that cycle if it happens in the resale? Is there any easy way to get allocated a new cookie?

You need to delete your cookies and try again. Keep deleting them and refreshing until you get through to the holding page. It might take quite a few attempts, but otherwise you're not even making successful requests for access

[LondonTom]

7 minutes ago, billum said:

But, sorry to sound like a smart-arse, that is also exactly what you'd see if it was truly random...

Yes and I've been subscriber of that theory but that starts to become less likely the more years you see it.

[rob.a]

I'm another one who got to the registration page and then have it error until it was sold out. I was the only member of our group to get that far. It's gutting to get that far and then fail.

[choo choos]

That is why I cant be arsed anymore, having to deal with the disappointment of not even getting a sniff of a log in, staying sober-ish Sat night, worrying about sleeping in, etc etc. Last tried for tix 4 yrs ago, and now go to a festie that was like G 25yrs past. Oh for the days of walking in to HMV and buying a ticket! (DOB)

[The Red Telephone]

9 hours ago, eFestivals said:

I was getting the holding page without problems on my desktop using my home broadband, and got thru and booked (first time in about a decade). I didn't see the holding page at all on my laptop connected via my phone.

I really do think it's just luck.

Glad you were successful!

[Ayrshire Chris]

I found the booking site all over the place. Holding page. Server overload. Error page. Timed out. I was bounced from one to another. Finally getting to registration  even then I was told sorry timed out and thought I’d blown it.  It was fraught brutal and nerve wracking 

[guypjfreak]

Nightmare.. That's all I can say... Much worse.. 

[kevbizarre]

6 different people across my 3 groups of 6 got through to either the reg page a few times or payment page and it crashed each time. That hasn't happened on that scale before. Only one group got tickets and even that was lucky as the website crashed as they were paying just before 9.30am. I didn't get close just refreshing on the holding page on both chrome laptop and iPad safari. This was my most difficult personal experience since it got like this...

[cerv]

8 hours ago, OrganicShamanic said:

I'm afraid you were virtually doomed to fail, unless you could make a fresh request with no cookies and get allocated a functioning server.

Essentially you need to either delete your cookies, or start a fresh session by using a different browser or restarting your browser with a new 'private' session (e.g incognito)

I'm not sure this is the only reason for this behaviour from what I was seeing. Before this year's sale I was thinking exactly the same as you: it's that X-Mapping cookie sending you to a duff server, clear it and things should improve right? So I did some tests this time on multiple cloud machines after being so frustrated in previous years at not even getting a holding page up. Upshot was they didn't work at all, I had connection timeouts on all of them. They weren't even getting that X-Mapping cookie issued. 

Meanwhile on my home broadband and logging into a work machine for another internet connection I had a steady holding page appear that I could comfortably refresh (getting quick response). 

The common link between those cloud desktops is the network that they were connecting via. Wouldn't be surprised others were running some instances too, maybe hammering it with auto-refresh tools and so all I can think is that there was a bottleneck in the journey (i.e. hops) between the cloud network and see's servers that led to the timeout. My attempts weren't even reaching See I think. Nothing you can do about that, you just need to have a variety of different internet connections to dip into in case one you're using gives you solid timeouts.

 

[Pear_Cider]

I've read about this happening over the years, but this was my first experience of it. We got through the booking pages, entered the card details and clicked Buy Tickets...everything froze. It was my son who got through on his mobile on 4G. Nothing he could do. Gutted ?

[OrganicShamanic]

12 minutes ago, cerv said:

I'm not sure this is the only reason for this behaviour from what I was seeing. Before this year's sale I was thinking exactly the same as you: it's that X-Mapping cookie sending you to a duff server, clear it and things should improve right? So I did some tests this time on multiple cloud machines after being so frustrated in previous years at not even getting a holding page up. Upshot was they didn't work at all, I had connection timeouts on all of them. They weren't even getting that X-Mapping cookie issued. 

Meanwhile on my home broadband and logging into a work machine for another internet connection I had a steady holding page appear that I could comfortably refresh (getting quick response). 

The common link between those cloud desktops is the network that they were connecting via. Wouldn't be surprised others were running some instances too, maybe hammering it with auto-refresh tools and so all I can think is that there was a bottleneck in the journey (i.e. hops) between the cloud network and see's servers that led to the timeout. My attempts weren't even reaching See I think. Nothing you can do about that, you just need to have a variety of different internet connections to dip into in case one you're using gives you solid timeouts.

 

How many different sessions did you try this on?
I did find I was getting timeouts on sessions without the X-Mapping cookie too, so there are definitely reasons for your request not to even reach the TrafficManager/Load Balancer. 

Do you have any network data from these attempts?

[faymondo]

First effort got in about 9.12. Page froze going through but thankfully ticked over in the end.

Got to a second reg number page just after 9.30 but that failed. Assuming because it was sold out ?

[cerv]

9 minutes ago, OrganicShamanic said:

How many different sessions did you try this on?
I did find I was getting timeouts on sessions without the X-Mapping cookie too, so there are definitely reasons for your request not to even reach the TrafficManager/Load Balancer. 

Do you have any network data from these attempts?

I had 9 different desktops running, friends had a few running too. Say 12 in total? All in the same AWS region (probably should have spread them out). None had a sniff. Wasn't hammering the severs with these machines either, just slow steady refreshing. When sale stopped access was back and sold out page loaded.

Wasn't connecting network data I'm afraid.