May 2008
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May 2008
May 2008
E-junkie_GuruWebmaster & Support Guru
May '08

Due to an unexpected upstream disruption of service initiated by our DNS provider (i.e., the folks who tell the entire Internet where "www.e-junkie.com" is -- or who used to, until about an hour or two ago), our system became unavailable to the Internet at large starting sometime early this afternoon (Arizona time, i.e., late afternoon EDT).



We have taken every step within our grasp to correct the situation, but the best options available to us still mean that there may be some continued lapse in service for some users until the rest of the Internet (i.e., your ISP and the ISPs for each of your buyers) "catches on" to the fact that another provider is now "directing traffic" for www.e-junkie.com.





I wish I could explain more, but our counsel would advise against that at least until we explore our legal options.

dvdcent
May '08

How many times will this be happening in the future? You probably kidding or what? There are tons of reliable services available on Internet. My website, for instance, has 99.99% uptime for 5 years. Godaddy had excellent uptime for me as well. I know theare are even much more reliable services. You are a serious company, I just can't believe you cannot resolve this issue for such a long time. I lost hundreds or maybe even thousands in sale because of those interruptions. This problem lasts about 3 months already. C'mon guys, you had plenty of time to find a reliable service. You will lose all of your clients if this will coutinue like that.

kim
May '08

I agree. I really like you guys but I had to research alternatives today because my business is just getting started and I don't want my customers to lose a sense of trust in my site's reliability.

E-junkie_GuruWebmaster & Support Guru
May '08

Until yesterday, we had gone over a month without any interruption in service, ever since we migrated to the new high-end datacenter. If you have been experiencing ongoing cart problems within the past month, then there is something amiss with your particular configuration; all of our other Merchants have been in operation just fine the whole time, and since everyone's service runs from the same software, any problems with our service would affect everyone, not just one or a few Merchants. Please send us a message describing what problems you are having, so we can help you remedy your configurations:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/contact.php



In fact, all of our own systems continued in full operation yesterday without a hitch; the problem was that the rest of the Internet started forgetting how to find us, and our DNS provider refused to continue reminding them. What happened yesterday had nothing whatsoever to with our servers, nor our datacenter, nor our software/scripting/programming, which all remained fully functional the entire time. What happened to us could happen to any site that doesn't operate their own DNS server -- namely, the vast majority of sites out there, almost certainly including all of yours. No matter what uptime stats you or we or anyone can claim, when the company that provides your ".com" domain name's DNS service decides to stop rendering that service, your site simply drops off the map and vanishes from the face of the Web; even though your server's uptime stats would continue uninterrupted, that doesn't matter when nobody's computer knows how to contact that server anymore.



So that's what happened, and that's why we're growing some serious nerd brass by assuming operation of our own DNS right here in-house, so that never again could we and our Merchants be held hostage by a third-party upstream provider beyond our control, as happened yesterday.

dvdcent
May '08
Tyson_NUntil yesterday, we had gone over a month without any interruption in service, ever since we migrated to the new high-end datacenter.





Your service was down:



04/23 - 6 min.

04/30 - 3 min.

05/01 - 60 sec.

05/09 - 10 min.

05/10 - 3 min. 57 sec.

05/12 - 1 hour 58 min.



Each of that second a sale could be made... That wasn't happening before...



I'm using www.pingdom.com



http://www.pingdom.com/services/howitworks/

E-junkie_ChefFounder
May '08

That only tells you how many times pingdom was unable to reach E-junkie .. which can be attributed to numerous problems in the route, not with our server.



Our homegrown pinger which runs on DreamHost fails to reach E-junkie at least once a month even though our server is up at that moment.

dvdcent
May '08

After I was notified by pingdom, I was unable to open e-junkie at some of those times either. I haven't received any orders at those times. That is why I came to conclusion that your service was down. I hope in the future you will be as good as you were 3 months ago. I really wish you all good.

E-junkie_ChefFounder
May '08

Russ, if you notice an outage, please feel free to call me at 520.248.0364 so we can immediately see if that's an outage or just a local network issue affecting a part of internet.

dvdcent
May '08

Ok. I hope that will not happen again in the future, if it will I will try to give you a call at that moment.



It doesn't really matter what are the reasons for all those interruptions, simply because those interruptions can be avoided somehow. I'm monitoring several other services through pingdom.com and some of them have 100% uptime for several months in a row, so as you were some time ago.

E-junkie_GuruWebmaster & Support Guru
May '08

Our point was that whenever you, or pingdom, or any particular end-user is unable to reach our site for a few minutes, that doesn't mean our service is down at our end. It could just be a localized network routing glitch anywhere on the Internet between our datacenter and the computer that's trying to reach us.



Every connection across the Internet has to hopscotch from one ISP to another across several to several-dozen hops. If any one of those hops are having a problem at any given moment, we could seem unreachable from that particular computer until the intermediate problem is resolved or a hopscotch route detour is found. Meanwhile, everyone else is able to reach our service just fine that whole time, because there's no problem at our end, and no problem in the particular routes between us and those other computers.

thad_e_junkie
May '08

Just went and checked the server logs, and for what it's worth; the last time the server was truly down was when we moved the servers into the new datacenter. :-)



-thad, E-Junkie Development Team

dvdcent
May '08

Oh, that's why I gave you the link how it works. http://www.pingdom.com/services/howitworks/



They have many servers all over the world. They don't just ping from one place. They ping from different computers located in different places. If a service doesn't work from 20 different computers located in different countries plus it doesn't work from 10 different US computers and all those computers use different ISP, then that service probably doesn't work for the rest of Internet users.

dvdcent
May '08

No, they don't show that info in user's account unfortunately.