Homepages broken again

[Neale D. Hind]

It's broken again - just like the 11th March.

/StartFTPDialogue

Connecting to: Demon homepage
Connection Established
220 homepages.demon.co.uk FTP server (Demon/Academ/WU [11] Dec 4
10:44:41 GMT 2001) ready.
Connected to: Demon homepage
USER easton
530-Sorry, there are too many users uploading at this time.
530-Please try again later.
530 User easton access denied....
Error logging on to: Demon homepage

/EndFTPDialogue

And just as before Demon network status
(<http://www.demon.net/helpdesk/networkstatus/summaryreport/> says:
Homepages OK

[Paul Terry]

Post by Neale D. Hind
And just as before Demon network status
Homepages OK

The message on the 0800 number always gets updated first, IME.

[David B]

I rang Demon to report this problem at around 1 or 2am, went to bed,
then at about 2pm rang again and it was only on my second call that
they seemed to be aware that the server was down.

I checked on google by searching for .demon.co.uk and the 15 or 20
sites I tried didn't work, then when I asked why the status did not
show anything despite the fault lasting something like 20 hours I was
told that it only affected a few people so it wasn't included on the
status page.

What's the use of the status page if it's not to report known issues?

If I chose 15 or 20 demon sites at random from the top 100 on google,
surely none of them working meant that it was more than 'a few'
affected?










On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 17:58:47 +0000, Paul Terry

Post by Paul Terry

Post by Neale D. Hind
And just as before Demon network status
Homepages OK

The message on the 0800 number always gets updated first, IME.

David Batty
______________________________________________________
Learn to type, save yourself time and money http://www.typingtutor.co.uk

[Neil Barker]

In article <***@4ax.com>, ***@here.com
says...

Post by David B
What's the use of the status page if it's not to report known issues?

For the CLT to spread carefully constructed 'information', as long as
it doesn't affect the share price.

[Mike]

Post by David B
If I chose 15 or 20 demon sites at random from the top 100 on google,
surely none of them working meant that it was more than 'a few'
affected?

According to InternetSeer, who keep sending me status messages,
my www.homepages.demon.co.uk page keeps falling off the internet for
reason of "Time Out". It disappears for anywhere between an hour and
five hours at a time.

[Chris Lawrence]

Post by Mike
According to InternetSeer, who keep sending me status messages,
my www.homepages.demon.co.uk page keeps falling off the internet for
reason of "Time Out". It disappears for anywhere between an hour and
five hours at a time.

I used to get spammed by InternetSeer, who liked to inform me that my
site had been unavailable for long periods between apparently random
times. This was blatantly not the case and so I gave them a zero for
credibility. Do they stop bullshitting once you pay them money?

[Mike]

Post by Chris Lawrence
I used to get spammed by InternetSeer,

Same here: I'm not paying them money. It's an unexpected side effect of
agreeing to their terms and conditions (that I never saw). I used a site
to submit to many search engines at once ... they clearly agree to all sorts
of things on my behalf :(

Post by Chris Lawrence
times. This was blatantly not the case and so I gave them a zero for
credibility

How do you know that it was not the case? Did you have some independent
remote monitoring that could see from the same point on the internet that
Internetseer were looking from?

Post by Chris Lawrence
Do they stop bullshitting once you pay them money?

I'm not stumping up to find out :)

[Chris Lawrence]

Post by Mike

Post by Chris Lawrence
I used to get spammed by InternetSeer,

Same here: I'm not paying them money. It's an unexpected side effect of
agreeing to their terms and conditions (that I never saw). I used a site
to submit to many search engines at once ... they clearly agree to all sorts
of things on my behalf :(

I've never had any dealings with them at all.

Post by Mike

Post by Chris Lawrence
times. This was blatantly not the case and so I gave them a zero for
credibility

How do you know that it was not the case? Did you have some independent
remote monitoring that could see from the same point on the internet that
Internetseer were looking from?

Their 'report' was so contrived that it was clearly made up for spamming
purposes. If my site had been down in any way that allowed me to do
anything about it, I'd have already known. And in any case I'm not
really that bothered if it does go down at the moment.

[Dr John Stockton]

JRS: In article <***@easton.demon.co.uk>, dated Mon, 14
Mar 2005 17:40:45, seen in news:demon.service, Neale D. Hind

Post by Neale D. Hind
It's broken again - just like the 11th March.
530-Sorry, there are too many users uploading at this time.

But how do you know that there are not too many users uploading at the
time?

However, the upload clock is *again* about 7 minutes slow - could
someone be deputed to wind it up each week?

[Dr John Stockton]

JRS: In article <L4++***@merlyn.demon.co.uk>, dated Fri, 25
Mar 2005 14:06:12, seen in news:demon.service, Dr John Stockton

Post by Dr John Stockton
However, the upload clock is *again* about 7 minutes slow - could
someone be deputed to wind it up each week?

The day after that was posted, the clock was more or less correct.
Thanks to whoever put it right.

After a couple of days, the lag again became noticeable; it was about
five minutes earlier this evening. That's a rate error of the order of
0.05%.

Could it be attended to on a daily basis (preferably at 17:45 UK time
<g>)?

Actually, I've heard that computer clocks can be automatically
synchronised with the Right Time - Turnpike manages to do it. Perhaps
some such code might be fitted and pointed at a working time server?

[David Woolley]

Post by Dr John Stockton
five minutes earlier this evening. That's a rate error of the order of
0.05%.
Actually, I've heard that computer clocks can be automatically
synchronised with the Right Time - Turnpike manages to do it. Perhaps
some such code might be fitted and pointed at a working time server?

The preferred way of doing that is to use NTP (Network Time Protocol) but
NTP has a maximum correction capacity of 0.05% (500ppm) itself. Any machine
that has an error of 450, or so, ppm or more should be considered broken and
needs fixing properly before trying to discipline the clock. The most common
cause of this problem these days is lost clock interrupts (particularly a
problem on NT and on Linux (especially for Linux, on fast machines when
a relatively recent "enhancement" resulted in a 1ms clock interrupt, rather
than the more standard 10ms value).

(Turnpike doesn't use NTP, but that's because it is used on a occasional
dialup basis, not always on. Demon operate a couple of NTP servers that
can be used by always on systems.)

(Most good motherboards have an intrinsic error of less than about 30ppm,
and it is rare for cheap ones to exceed about 200ppm.)

[Paul Terry]

Post by David Woolley
(Turnpike doesn't use NTP,

It uses SNTP or TIME - user configurable. I think you may not be up to
date with recent versions of Turnpike.

Post by David Woolley
but that's because it is used on a occasional
dialup basis, not always on.

Turnpike is "always on" here (ADSL) and is set to correct the time once
every two hours, using SNTP.

[David Woolley]

Post by Paul Terry
It uses SNTP or TIME - user configurable. I think you may not be up to

SNTP, whilst it can use an NTP server is not NTP. (Not directly relevant
here, but W32Time as supplied in NT 5+ is not even valid SNTP.)

Post by Paul Terry
Turnpike is "always on" here (ADSL) and is set to correct the time once
every two hours, using SNTP.

Real NTP attempts to maintain the correct time (usually to better than
10ms, and often better than 1ms), all the time, by correcting effective
clock frequency, and polls at an adaptive rate, normally between once
in 64 and 1024 seconds. One would expect all the Demon servers to be
running real NTP.

[Brian {Hamilton Kelly}]

Post by David Woolley
Real NTP attempts to maintain the correct time (usually to better than
10ms, and often better than 1ms), all the time, by correcting effective
clock frequency, and polls at an adaptive rate, normally between once
in 64 and 1024 seconds. One would expect all the Demon servers to be
running real NTP.

Errm, did you mean "using" NTP? Demon have a number of time *servers*
(one of which, IIRC, is Tier 1) running NTP daemons. I'll agree with you
that *all* their infrastructure ought to be synchronizing with these
servers.

Also, remember that many "NTP" clients are nothing of the sort, but
merely use other services (such as DAYTIME) to set their local clocks.

[Mike Bristow]

Post by Brian {Hamilton Kelly}
Errm, did you mean "using" NTP? Demon have a number of time *servers*
(one of which, IIRC, is Tier 1) running NTP daemons. I'll agree with you
that *all* their infrastructure ought to be synchronizing with these
servers.

While I agree in principle, it can be tricky in practice due to the network
topology of some elements (eg, equipment that's on a private network).

In general, they aren't insurmountable problems, but in the more
tricky cases it is easy to overlook.

[Tim Preston]

Post by David Woolley
(Most good motherboards have an intrinsic error of less than about 30ppm,
and it is rare for cheap ones to exceed about 200ppm.)

At a presentation during EuroBSDCon 2001 [1] the guy giving the talk
decribed the average onboard clock on PCs (and Suns, etc) as 'better for
measuring temperature than the passage of time' ;)


[1] Something about about time syncronisation in FreenBSD 5 I think.