Website Trouble

TamuScarecrow · Post by **TamuScarecrow** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 1:02 am

I got on last night at 6 P.M. with no problem and stayed on until 1 A.M. this morning loading up spreadsheets. I hate to say this but it may have been a regional thing or else maybe a dozen people need to call their local phone folks or DSL carriers.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 2:27 am

Since I didn't know exactly what the problem was last night, I didn't make a post. However, I am hooking up with STATS this morning to find out why the site was so slow yesterday and last night. STATS has certainly tested this out before and has experience with providing live scoring and handling increased traffic. I'm convinced that our 21 additional leagues isn't bogging down the server, but beyond that I'm not sure what the Week 1 problems were at this point.

I can't provide any standard lines or excuses because I'm not sure what happened or if it happened to everyone. But I will say that I have all the confidence in the world in STATS and we'll get the live scoring down ASAP.

As for the NFBC site, I'm not sure what Hoosier Hick is talking about concerning problems with STATS. The baseball site has run smoothly all year long. Football will be the same.

BONGIZMO · Post by **BONGIZMO** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 3:00 am

As an FYI, I was incorrect when I said the DM results had been adjusted and are being tabulated correctly. They still are not and are only being tallied with the inputted starters.

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 3:48 am

Originally posted by Greg Ambrosius:
As for the NFBC site, I'm not sure what Hoosier Hick is talking about concerning problems with STATS. The baseball site has run smoothly all year long. Football will be the same. Football AND baseball site were both slow and they were both DOWN yesterday. The baseball FA transactions didn't run until a couple hours after the deadline, 7pm.

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 4:01 am

Is there any recourse for owners who wanted to switch players in the Sunday night game but were unable to do to the website being down?

[ September 13, 2004, 10:01 AM: Message edited by: Gordon Gekko ]

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 4:06 am

Gordon, you are correct. The NFBC site was SLOW when it came to posting the free agent pickups yesterday after 21 weeks of always having them posted 20 minutes after the deadline. Last night I believe they were posted 5 hours and 15 minutes after the deadline. It's obvious to you and me that STATS had some server problems yesterday or at least the traffic coming from somewhere (could it be the SI.com site?) slowed things down.

STATS just e-mailed me as I was writing this and they admit that they had more capacity on their Oracle db housing system than expected and that slowed down all of their commissioner products, which included the NFBC and NFFC. I have been assured that STATS is "bringing more Oracle machines on-line tonite in a more stable configuration that will more than double our
capacity."

Again, I have total confidence in STATS and I trust that Week 2's system will run smoother than Week 1. Let me know how the live scoring works tonight and if you notice any improvement from yesterday. Thanks and I apologize for the delays and problems during Week 1.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 4:12 am

Don't tell me, you want to start Quentin Griffin now?

Seriously, you know me well enough to have e-mailed me directly or even to have called me directly if you wanted Sunday lineup changes and couldn't get it done because of the system. Right now there is no recourse as I have no documentation that any NFFC owner wanted to make lineup changes and were unable to do so. I received no e-mails or phone calls last night requesting any lineup changes. I wish I could help, but again I have no documentation of you or anyone else wanting to make a change.

Allowing lineup changes five minutes before each game time is a nice feature for the NFFC, but I think everyone should have their lineup in place before each game just in case anything does happen to your computer or the NFFC game site. I trust you did have it in place.

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 4:31 am

Originally posted by Greg Ambrosius:
Seriously, you know me well enough to have e-mailed me directly or even to have called me directly if you wanted Sunday lineup changes and couldn't get it done because of the system.
I do know you pretty well, and I felt bad posting this last night, as I'd like to see you succeed.

I was following the rules and didn't want to set a precedent that some may have questioned (by e-mailing you or calling you, as they were not options covered by the rules). After Kennison made his first catch, it probably wouldn't have looked good with me saying I wanted to start him. In hindsight, maybe I should have sent you an e-mail.

I guess this is just a SNAFU, where I get short-changed.

[ September 13, 2004, 10:33 AM: Message edited by: Gordon Gekko ]

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 4:47 am

Gordon, don't ever feel bad telling it like it is. I wouldn't recognize you if you stopped doing that.

I didn't realize the live scoring was slow yesterday afternoon as I don't have a team to follow like the rest of you. I worked in the morning and early afternoon and didn't hear a thing from anyone. I was happy through the first set of games to see things were going well and was surprised to see late last night that we had problems. Then I saw the NFBC site was slow with transactions and I obviously realized that STATS was having server problems.

I have talked with Steve Byrd and Jim Pollard at STATS this morning and I'm confident that this was a Week 1 snafu. They were prepared for the increased traffic and had Oracle reps in the office all week, but obviously they still had some timing glitches yesterday. Doubling the server capacity for this week should alleviate the problem going forward. Again, this isn't an NFFC problem as I'm sure all products using STATS felt the slowdown yesterday.

It's not an excuse, just an explanation and you know we try to explain everything that happens here. Will people lose confidence in the NFFC because the system was slow this first weekend? Only if it's slow next weekend and the weekend after that and .... well, that would be enough. STATS can't and won't let that happen, I'm sure. But not telling you what happened would be a worse offense, I'm afraid.

I apologize that you couldn't get Kennison into your starting lineup last night, but you are right it was a SNAFU. One I didn't have control over, which I wish I did. We'll move forward and hopefully have a smoother system this week. Good luck the rest of the way.

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 5:00 am

Relying on a 3rd party can be tough sometimes. So, are there any other contingencies if this were to happen in the future? If you can put the STATS phone # in the rules, I'd appreciate it.