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AT&T Activations Servers Overloaded with iPhone 4S Launch

Moyank24 said:
This is not a surprise.

You would think 5 phones later, AT&T would be more prepared for days like this.
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Then again it hardly seems worth building out a server network to handle crush capacity one day a year. This peak is probably like 10,000x normal daily loads. If I were the ATT CFO, I would not approve a budget that builds to that peak.

Now if ATT only ran their activation servers on the Amazon Cloud maybe they could scale better for a day.
 
You know... I used to defend you, AT&T, but you're making this more and more difficult. Do you think Apple told them? Maybe their IT guy slept in...
 
I'm still waiting on Brown to deliver mine, and I'm sure I'll be disappointed with the activation process when he does but we gotta give ATT a bit of slack. There's a whole lotta activations going on at exactly the same time. Yeah, it sucks... and I too believe Apple is partially to blame due to the sims, but let's be realistic. :)
 
strausd said:
I am on the phone with AT&T and the lady started to read my instructions for downloading iOS 5! HAHA!
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I gave up. She shuffled me to iPhone support and I couldn't get anywhere w/out a serial #....I can't get to it b/c the phone isn't activated! Ah! I should of just gone to Verizon...
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

C'mon AT&T!! This sucks!
 
Aviator189 said:
I gave up. She shuffled me to iPhone support and I couldn't get anywhere w/out a serial #....I can't get to it b/c the phone isn't activated! Ah! I should of just gone to Verizon...
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Umm... serial number is typically on the bottom of the box, along with IMEI

EDIT: rwlcpa beat me to it.
 
I think some who are so quick to rip AT&T over this are some of the same ones who are equally as quick to defend Apple when their servers fall over from the stress each year. Neither have the infrastructure to handle the load of iPhone launches. It's just a fact that people will have to come to grips with. I also agree that Apple is the root cause here in that they force everyone to activate a new SIM. That's just more controlling behavior with no real benefit and just burns through millions of SIM cards when they don't need to.
 
deeddawg said:
Umm... serial number is typically on the bottom of the box, along with IMEI

EDIT: rwlcpa beat me to it.
Click to expand...

With rage comes me being an idiot...Thanks guys! I think I'm just going to try and activate on my end. I really doubt there is anything they can do?
 
Keep trying

I got mine done first try with no issues. Keep trying (to those who haven't got there's activated yet): It will work. :)
 
gkarris said:
LOLOLOLOL....

My understanding is at the Oshkosh Airshow this past Summer, people on AT&T couldn't get service due to overload... :eek:

People on other carriers were merrily cell-phoning along... :D
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What does that have to do with the price of rice in China?
 
I can't even get on apples site to track my shipment since I never got an email that has the tracking info. Apples site is jammed!
 
fenwah said:
Grrrreeeaaattt! :mad:

Mine is due from FedEx by 3PM EDT. I don't want to have to mess with that.
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Mine too - Kind of glad, actually, that it didn't come earlier. There is always a reason for everything.

Doesn't mean I haven't been stalking my window every two seconds to spot the jingle jangle of a Fed-Ex truck.
 
gkarris said:
LOLOLOLOL....

My understanding is at the Oshkosh Airshow this past Summer, people on AT&T couldn't get service due to overload... :eek:

People on other carriers were merrily cell-phoning along... :D
Click to expand...


During the University of Tennessee football games the same thing happens. 102,000+ people in one location at the same time = NO service! :mad:
 
Moyank24 said:
You would think 5 phones later, AT&T would be more prepared for days like this.
Click to expand...
Only if you're not in the business of operating servers yourself. It is difficult to justify the cost of building and supporting enough infrastructure to handle a enormous spike of traffic that happens one time a year.
 
Scott6666 said:
Then again it hardly seems worth building out a server network to handle crush capacity one day a year. This peak is probably like 10,000x normal daily loads. If I were the ATT CFO, I would not approve a budget that builds to that peak.
Click to expand...

Actually, it is what many companies require. Under some interpretations of Sarbanes-Oxley, it's considered to be a legal mandate.

A classic example is Intuit. They must have sufficient capacity to handle the peak load just before the filing deadline. When they didn't, it made national news and the IRS gave electronic filers an additional day. Same for online brokerages... the last thing the CIOs want is a story on the front page of the Wall St. Journal about their trading system being unable to handle the load.

Scott6666 said:
Now if ATT only ran their activation servers on the Amazon Cloud maybe they could scale better for a day.
Click to expand...

Funny that you mention that. Why do you think Amazon has their "Elastic Cloud"? It's because they have to build out a huge infrastructure to handle the rush of Christmas shopping orders that occur just after Thanksgiving. It sits idle for the rest of the year, and they rent it out for additional revenue.

Apple and AT&T should have used cloud services for these peak periods. However, it's not as simple as replicating servers -- a different system architecture may be required.
 
So do we just wait for it to start working or is there something else we need to do? I figured I was all set until I had no service on my 4s. I switched my iPhone 4 simcard in and it says waiting for activation.
 
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