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AT&T site has officially CRASHED
- Thread starter smontague
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I understand things happen and Im not one to complain very quickly but this is kind of pathetic for multi-billion dollar companies to not have the resources to handle preorder. Realistically I would guess we can still preorder for at least 2 more days and still get it on launch but who knows.
Got to love the apple fans who are completely clueless on how the system works.
No one can expect to have to have servers in place to handle this type of peak load. It is far from being cost effective. If they put something in place to handle it 60-70% of it would go completely unused for 355 days of the year. No you design it to handle a little more than your average peak load which Apple pre order are far from.
Apple is a company with tons of worshippers who will do what ever their god tells them to do. Order means in droves which will crash any system.
b/c they are currently the only carrier that has the iPhone. deal with it like the rest of us... or wait and get an unlocked one for what.. $1,500?
ofc as no one else can preorder.
They have literally pushed the preorder day back for most peoples
There are companies that specialize in leasing bandwidth and server capacity just for launches like these. Microsoft often uses them for big rollouts like they most likely will for Windows 7 SP1.
I could defend AT&T and Apple for the first few hours, but it is starting to get a bit ridiculous. Someone didn't prepare properly.
Probably even longer. Last year the pre-orders went for 8 days before shutting off launch day deliveries.
yeah, not only the site, the stores are down too. I went to an ATT store and they said their systems were down. That was at like 10:05am est and now it's 1:20pm and they are still waiting.
I am waiting to order my iPhone through Apple, but I decided to try it through AT&T and I was able to get all the way through to the checkout screen with no problems. This was about 5 minutes ago.
Last year there wasn't a 6 month upgrade grace period. I think demand is much higher than last year.
Regardless, I still think we'll be able to pre-order for 2-3 days after this fiasco. I mean, no one is able to get a pre-order in. It's not like the stock has been completely depleted.
Of course, but I don't think that 8 days will get cut down to 2. I'd say at least 4-6.
But also, last year they weren't building 3M iPhones/month. So perhaps the supply will easily meet demand.
I tried the Apple Store app and was able to reserve one at the apple store near me...anyone else try it?? I did try the apple site this morning was able to place an order, but it has been processing it now for over 5 hours...unreal!!!
Content delivery via networks like akamai and the like is alot different then fetching real time private data from ATT's backend. After the iPad leak fiasco you really think they'll farm that out too? Oddly enough not everyone was up at 2 in the morning hitting refresh on the preorder page. People will trickle in up until the 24th and life will go on.
Oh, completely agree. Last year was more like a mid cycle refresh. This year's a flippin all new model! I don't know I would want to pick it up in the store, especially w/o a reservation.
Not being a web admin, I'm not fully aware of this and to be honest I thought that might be the case.
So, I retract my uninformed statement.
Obviously there were/are some bugs to fix in addition to the overload of traffic.
Last year they weren't building 3M iPhones/month either.
Those download servers are very different than the servers AT&T needs to use and even then there are a few servers who only job is to re direct traffic to download *blank*.
For AT&T they need secure servers to process that information and need servers storing and editing the customer database. Those key parts they can not nor should they have to get rent temporary servers due to security issues. It is a huge risk putting that information out of their hands.
So in that note you little things does not work. AT&T needs to own the key parts that they need to control and keep in house.
It is not the bandwithe issues that they are running into but the billing and customer data base servers that are the weakest link and that is something they can not get temporary servers set up for.
Nonsense.
Ever hear of Amazon EC2?
*Anybody* can rent the server capacity to handle this type of peak load. And, generally, for less than the cost of renting servers full-time. (That is, EC2 prices/hour have come down to less than the hourly cost of renting a dedicated server. They're very competitive.)
And, there are other "cloud services", as well, for handling peak capacity.
As for "keeping it house", that's possible too. If the volume of secure data is minimal vs. total throughput, certainly a VPN can be set-up between the web servers and in-house database servers. If this is still too insecure, an in-house cloud can be set-up. While this does require enough machines to do the peak job, the same machines can be re-deployed for other purposes as well (companies don't typically have simultaneous peaks in all of their operational areas at once.)
I just logged into to AT&T and ordered my iPhone 4 without any problems at all. I kept getting "session expired" when I tried to order it through Apple.
This makes sense. You probably wouldn't replicate your SQL or Oracle clusters out to a 3rd party provider.
I don't disagree with you at all. If BB and Walmart etc are going to have them on launch day, they have a ton produced. However, I don't want to "wait" thinking I can pre-order tomorrow and then miss out. I'll keep trying while I'm working on other things.
I actually went to an AT&T store and ordered three. Since they can't get to the system either*, the guy dutifully did all the paperwork by hand, swiped the credit card three times and everything. He said he would send a text message to everyone who ordered from him later today when he actually entered the orders into the system. The guy was very nice and apologetic that he couldn't enter the orders right then and there. I felt bad that the next person he would probably have to deal with would be one of the multitude of jackasses in line behind me who were ranting and raving and acting like 5 year olds who missed christmas.
"I spent FOUR HOURS trying to order one from my iPad then I had to drive ALL THE WAY HERE FROM HEMPFIELD and YOU DON'T HAVE ANY?!?"
When you consider that Hempfield is about 2 miles from this particular store, the salesman really should have come out from behind the counter and kneed that clown in the crotch as hard as he possibly could.
Oh...I told the salesman as I was leaving that I actually did have root canal this morning, which is true, and that dealing with him to order three iPhones was a LOT easier than that. He had a good laugh.
*The guy told me that at some point AT&T was going to suspend the online store entirely so their sales people could enter all the orders they had to take by hand.
"I spent FOUR HOURS trying to order one from my iPad then I had to drive ALL THE WAY HERE FROM HEMPFIELD and YOU DON'T HAVE ANY?!?"
When you consider that Hempfield is about 2 miles from this particular store, the salesman really should have come out from behind the counter and kneed that clown in the crotch as hard as he possibly could.
Oh...I told the salesman as I was leaving that I actually did have root canal this morning, which is true, and that dealing with him to order three iPhones was a LOT easier than that. He had a good laugh.
*The guy told me that at some point AT&T was going to suspend the online store entirely so their sales people could enter all the orders they had to take by hand.