Tickets on sale Sunday 7 Oct

[Mr. Cowbell]

What about 3G?

Do you think buying tickets via a mobile device could work?

Sorry if it's already been brought up I haven't read through the whole thread.

[eFestivals]

A group of us have decided to share registration numbers and postcodes and just keep trying until we all have tickets. One question I have though is, in the unlikley event that two of us were lucky enough to get through at more or less the same time and tried to buy tickets for each other, would the system recognise this and prevent us from buying a ticket for someone who already has one allocated to them? If that happens we can just carry on down the list until all 8 tickets have been allocated and it gives everyone the motivation to keep going right until the end.

In previous years, once a reg number has been used it can't be used again. The error message it gave if you tried didn't tell you that it had already been used tho (I can't remember what the error did say).

[eFestivals]

What about 3G?

Do you think buying tickets via a mobile device could work?

Sorry if it's already been brought up I haven't read through the whole thread.

it's possible that they're filtered thru to a different processing system, but I can't see why they'd bother to do that.

There's no reason why it couldn't run on the same servers, the only difference is a different page design (all the info they want from you is identical, no matter whether using a mobile device or desktop machine).

Edited September 11, 2012 by eFestivals

[Pinhead]

Just read rest of page 14 - that all open tabs respond to the same session once it is established strongly indicates an IP specific session model. If this happened for multiple browsers on the same IP, then that would also lend weight to browser type making no difference to the session manager at See.

Bandwidth - unless you are still using a 56K modem, no-one with a modern xDSL or using a company network will have any bandwidth advantage or restriction - the actual HTML and data being transferred between client and server for See's Glasto ticket app is really very small.

Home broadband public (i.e. Internet facing) IP's are allocated by the ISP as either fixed or sometimes rotated though a subnet, sometimes even during sessions much to the detriment of some applications! Company ones are typically fixed. All are unique and some are now even IPv6 ones on your home DSL router. The remaining IPv4 ones are often now NAT'ed to new IPv6 ones internally within the ISP's core network. If there is any advantage to be gained, it is in the use of as many of these unique addresses as possible, which translates into using as many home DSL, company, mobile clients as you can.

[01seb]

A group of us have decided to share registration numbers and postcodes and just keep trying until we all have tickets. One question I have though is, in the unlikley event that two of us were lucky enough to get through at more or less the same time and tried to buy tickets for each other, would the system recognise this and prevent us from buying a ticket for someone who already has one allocated to them? If that happens we can just carry on down the list until all 8 tickets have been allocated and it gives everyone the motivation to keep going right until the end.

[Pinhead]

it's possible that they're filtered thru to a different processing system, but I can't see why they'd bother to do that.

There's no reason why it couldn't run on the same servers, the only difference is a different page design (all the info they want from you is identical, no matter whether using a mobile device or desktop machine).

[eFestivals]

Just read rest of page 14 - that all open tabs respond to the same session once it is established strongly indicates an IP specific session model. If this happened for multiple browsers on the same IP, then that would also lend weight to browser type making no difference to the session manager at See.

they'd be nuts beyond belief to do any blocking by just IP. All of the NHS uses the same IP; all AOL users use about 10 IPs; Orange give you different IP on each page request (and the IP you just had gets given to someone else); etc, etc, etc .... any sales system written with simple IP blocking isn't worth its salt.

There's absolutely no need to look at IPs if you're using sessions (tho you might do, to check another IP hasn't hi-jacked the session).

Bandwidth - unless you are still using a 56K modem, no-one with a modern xDSL or using a company network will have any bandwidth advantage or restriction - the actual HTML and data being transferred between client and server for See's Glasto ticket app is really very small.

I agree with this.

Home broadband public (i.e. Internet facing) IP's are allocated by the ISP as either fixed or sometimes rotated though a subnet, sometimes even during sessions much to the detriment of some applications! Company ones are typically fixed. All are unique and some are now even IPv6 ones on your home DSL router. The remaining IPv4 ones are often now NAT'ed to new IPv6 ones internally within the ISP's core network. If there is any advantage to be gained, it is in the use of as many of these unique addresses as possible, which translates into using as many home DSL, company, mobile clients as you can.

I agree it's worth trying, it can't hurt (says the man with 6 IPs ).

But I doubt it'll give any benefit. IP blocking is foolish.

Edited September 11, 2012 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

Had better success last year on 3G.

"better"? Better against what measure? You have no measure.

Success is ONLY success. Some people are ALWAYS getting success when you are not. Whether you are the one that is successful when others are not is (on an equal basis) simply down to random luck, of your request hitting that server at the point it's ready to serve a ticket page.

If the chance of success and failure is absolutely equal (I know it's very unlikely to be in reality) then some people will be getting thru every time while others don't get thru at all while others get a mix of both.

Your "better success" is likely to be the luck running in your favour with those tries, and nothing else. It's human nature that tells you you must be doing something super-special to get thru.

However, that might just be down to a different web app at See serving mobile clients (perhaps set up because mobile browsers are so lean and the app needs to be ultra compatible with them).

A form is a form is a form.

Unless their web designers are numpties it'll just be a different skin to the same transaction fields (but given how many numpties there are in web design, that's quite possible).

[Pinhead]

"they'd be nuts beyond belief to do any blocking by just IP. All of the NHS uses the same IP; all AOL users use about 10 IPs; Orange give you different IP on each page request (and the IP you just had gets given to someone else); etc, etc, etc .... any sales system written with simple IP blocking isn't worth its salt."

True, I don't think they would actually block any IP's - but I bet the system will just ignore or drop multiple incoming requests from the same source IP, typically within a configurable time frame.

Most of the NHS use the same public IP - I recently worked for them for 2 years and all trusts are linked together by a private service WAN called the "N3", with its own secure Internet gateway. However, its so slow and unreliable that some trusts have installed their own local gateways (to some extent against Government policy), and therefore have varying public subnets at their disposal.

Perhaps that 10 IP thing may be relevant to why AOL users claimed to have had less success that other ISP users back in the 2011 post-ticket day fallout discussions on here... In reality though, these are likely to all be NAT'ed core switch IP's you are seeing rather than those for the DSL endpoint routers.

""better"? Better against what measure? You have no measure."

My measure (though I appreciate it was subjective) - I had not had a peep of a ticket page throughout the whole morning. Then on an off chance I tried my phone and bang - straight through. Then again a little later, and then again even after restarting the phone. Still nothing on the PC's. Unfortunately the browser on that old Nokia E90 I had just would not work with the ticket app Though success and failure should be random for all clients as you suggest, the fact that this repeatable 3G behaviour was somewhat improbable made me wonder about the set up their end. Hardly proof at all of course, but unexpected . . .

"Unless their web designers are numpties it'll just be a different skin to the same transaction fields (but given how many numpties there are in web design, that's quite possible)."

Embedded client side scripts could vary where used couldn't they? E.g. no Javascript on the mobile version since support was still patchy in 2011? Though if they are using IIS I'd expect ASP.NET server side processing to be at work.

[eFestivals]

""better"? Better against what measure? You have no measure."

My measure (though I appreciate it was subjective) - I had not had a peep of a ticket page throughout the whole morning. Then on an off chance I tried my phone and bang - straight through. Then again a little later, and then again even after restarting the phone. Still nothing on the PC's. Unfortunately the browser on that old Nokia E90 I had just would not work with the ticket app Though success and failure should be random for all clients as you suggest, the fact that this repeatable 3G behaviour was somewhat improbable made me wonder about the set up their end. Hardly proof at all of course, but unexpected . . .

unexpected is often what random is.

It's possible it was easier. It's unlikely it actually was. That's how random works.

For example, I got no sniff of the ticket page with whatever I tried - two phones, three desktops, and one laptop. My anecdotal evidence is of no less value than your own.

Edited September 11, 2012 by eFestivals

[ivan]

Last seven or 8 years I have always gone to the office and struggled with 4 pc's to be rung up at 9.02 with

"Got ours from sorted from home , we are back in , how many tickets you want mate ? "

[eFestivals]

Last seven or 8 years I have always gone to the office and struggled with 4 pc's to be rung up at 9.02 with

"Got ours from sorted from home , we are back in , how many tickets you want mate ? "

that's the thing: some are always getting tickets when others are not.

I think people are too quick to forget that fact when thinking about why they might have been lucky.

[Pinhead]

"For example, I got no sniff of the ticket page with whatever I tried - two phones, three desktops, and one laptop. My anecdotal evidence is of no less value than your own."

How did you get in then in the end for 2011? I worked for Oxfam again, which is essentially my backup plan if ticket day is unsuccessful.

[eFestivals]

How did you get in then in the end for 2011?

a friend got thru to the ticket page, so I got sorted that way.

Fingers crossed I'll personally have better luck with the ticket system this year.

[Pinhead]

Funny - re-registration confirmation just came though as I read this. A good omen perhaps? Otherwise its another year checking all yer tickets again!

[markeee]

It's extremely unlikely that any sales system works by limiting one transaction per IP address - it would mean that only one AOL user could buy a ticket, or only person who works within the NHS. There's a massive amount of IP sharing that goes on.

Instead, sales systems tend to use sessions. Any session is related to a specific browser (rather than the user's computer), and with some browsers (if not all) &/or systems, only one session is created with multiple browser windows.I'

I'm not entirely sure if it was still the case with the last Glasto sales, or if it's still the case within Firefox, but I'm pretty sure that when using Firefox to buy tickets a few years ago, and with multiple windows open within firefox, that when one window got a sales page, all of them did.

I didn't check the session ids, but it's a pretty fair presumption that because all windows got the salkes page at the same time, then they were all sharing the same session - meaning that multiple windows with one browser gave you no advantage over using just one window (and might have actually had the opposite effect).

Like I say, I'm not 100% that what I suggest will give an advantage, but it certainly won't give you a lesser advantage to using multiple windows in one browser. And if it does give you an advantage then that advantage will be significant - more than significant enough to make it worth trying!

It's very definitely what I shall be doing.

[markeee]

It is possible that different browsers may present some advantage, depending on the design of the ticket booking web app at See. Each browser type will pesent a different banner when the session is requested and depending on the web app design, this might result in an additional successful unique session request from the same IP.

However, I believe that connecting via multiple source IP's is the most likely method to gain the attention of the IIS Session Broker for the web app. Multiple requests from the same IP are likely to have been configured to be ignored by IIS in order to reduce load.

[eFestivals]

That'#s what I thought like if one IP is hammering a site, I assumed it would be blocked and requests ignored for maybe 5-10mins or something

while it in theory sounds a good idea, it's far too crude a method when the realities of the web are put in the consideration.

Why do orange do things like that?! seems a bit odd,

I should make clear that I was referring to 'net access via a mobile phone account, and not their landline broadband service (which may be run in a different manner).

I guess it's possible that they no longer do that, as it's something I discovered about 4 years ago at Glasto when trying to send a mailer for efests that I'd set-up before going to Glastonbury. Because the IP kept changing on every click, I had to re-login to the mailer software after each click.

I've no idea why they do it, aside from making a guess that they were(are?) trying to maximise the use of the resources they had or have available for customers use.

[Tranners1]

Hi guys

at what time did the tickets officially 'sell out' in 2011?

i heard about people still buying tickets a 9pm at night, is this true?

also, if that is the case, surely those who REALLY want a ticket that day, will get one, if you persist for 12 hours solid, surely you will eventually get through, no?

[5co77ie]

http://www.efestivals.co.uk/news/10/101007b.shtml

It's more a case of those who want tickets who persevere all day and through all the re-sales - may be more likely.

The sale on Sunday took around 4 hours until all tickets were sold.

[eFestivals]

Hi guys

at what time did the tickets officially 'sell out' in 2011?

i heard about people still buying tickets a 9pm at night, is this true?

also, if that is the case, surely those who REALLY want a ticket that day, will get one, if you persist for 12 hours solid, surely you will eventually get through, no?

It took about 4 hours to sell out last time.

And yes, persistence appears to pay off big time. From anecdotal evidence it seems to be the case that a lot of those who fail are those who try for a bit and then give up for a bit and then try again a bit later.

[Tranners1]

It took about 4 hours to sell out last time.

And yes, persistence appears to pay off big time. From anecdotal evidence it seems to be the case that a lot of those who fail are those who try for a bit and then give up for a bit and then try again a bit later.

[rexclark]

This thread is really giving me the fear. here's hoping it all works out for everyone, don't think I could go another year without the festival.

[Madyokel]

It took about 4 hours to sell out last time.

And yes, persistence appears to pay off big time. From anecdotal evidence it seems to be the case that a lot of those who fail are those who try for a bit and then give up for a bit and then try again a bit later.

[Bathimp]

We were auto refreshing from 0845 until sell out and still didnt get through.

Is there any benefit in auto refreshing or is it better to manually refreshing? Any advice welcome.

Persistence on ticket day is not always enough. It has to continue to the resales and volunteering.