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MacWorld Expo Traffic Analysis
Bioanarchism writes "MacWorld Expo has been the receiving end of the brute force of the Internet surfers. Netcraft also reports on the Internet traffic that other Apple websites have gotten since Steve Jobs gave the opening keynote." The Windows Server 2003-based MacWorld Expo site folded under all those hits, while Apple's sites, running Mac OS X, were only knocked into sluggishness. (Server load is a complex thing, of course -- more complicated than what OS is on the servers.)
After all, the servers were down for a good period of time during the speech. I know I couldn't get on www.apple.com
Did we really have to make that little quip at the end...?
I don't know what site you were looking at, but the Apple Store was certainly out of action for the best part of yesterday.
>(Server load is a complex thing, of course -- more complicated than what OS is on the servers.)
So why present it in such a flamebaiting way?
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Let the windows/mac bashing begin....
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
It doesn't really seem fair to compare the servers for the conference with Apple's corporate website. I'd expect a corporate website to be able to cope with huge loads, whatever OS it's running.
It may be a "complex thing". However, there is a very simple statistic (that is, # of hits on each site) which the posting leaves out.
This is the modern "complexity" diversion tactic: "It looks like Y causes X. However, X is very complex."
This causes the reader, ideally, to forget about the idea of finding other simple causes of X. For shame.
Now how many people will post jokes about Slashdotting Apple based on this story...
The apple.com website is mirrored worldwide by Akamai which uses over 2,000 Linux servers, so I don't think you derive much insight about Mac OS X from the sites relative performance yesterday.
I'm sure that the operating system has /absolutely nothing/ to do with MacWorld Expo's website going down... </sarcasm> I was under the impression that Apple.com would get way more hits on a daily basis than the MacWorld Expo website. I realize there are other factors involved in this, but still, I think that the choice of server operating system is contributing to the problem.
:)
Cause, like, isn't the iTunes Music Store on Apple's server?
I went back a couple hours later and I could add one to my cart, but couldn't complete the transaction.
Hours after that, my "impulsiveness" subsided and I have re-thought if I really want to spend that money.
So it looks like Apple may have lost a sale due to an inadequate web server.
Sam
Server load is a complex thing, of course -- more complicated than what OS is on the servers.
Then why did you bring it up and only mention what servers they were running?
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
To prove a point, Jobs had Apple's sites all run in a single Mac Mini. iTunes has been running on a daisy chain of seven iPod Shuffles.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
If by "only knocked into sluggishness" you mean "dropping 80% of the HTTP requests sent to it, making the site unusable for commerce", then sure, apple's store held up just fine.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
I tried to get on the Macworld Expo site all day to no avail, but I did get on apple.com. It was a little slower than I am used to, but it was available. I don't know if I would attribute that to one server using Windows and another using Apple's server software--however much I would like to. Rather, it could be that people Googling Macworld Expo were more inclined to go to the Expo site versus apple.com. I Googled it myself and the first couple of items on Google were for Expo pages. Simply could be a matter of numbers and not software--no matter how much I'd like to point at the Windows server and say, 'HA!'
Having done so much with so little for so long, I now can do anything with nothing at all.
Actually, Apple reneged and decided to make the presentation available, just not live.
Here is where you can watch it. QuickTime and streaming access to the Internet required.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
No transcript. How about how a QuickTime stream instead?
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2005/01/mwsf /
Yet another MS hater having to spread his FUD with implied meanings....
I managed to get onto the Apple sites new pages for the Shuffle and the Mac Mini around 7pm ish, I PDFed them and put them on my poor poor adsl webserver for others to get at, since the site was so slow (##mwsf-chat on freenode). My poor webserver took 67,000 hits in just over 6 hours last night for those files and the Mac Mini images.
What should sites like this do?
Do they need to spend to cope with once yearly spikes in traffic or just let the sites fall over - which in itself creates a 'story' and free advertising.
It seems with most 'big' news online there is always a secondary story regarding the number of visits to the website, and usually the event is seen as bigger if the webservers crash and burn under the load...
The Windows Server 2003-based Macworld Expo site folded under all those hits, while Apple's sites, running Mac OS X, were only knocked into sluggishness. (Server load is a complex thing, of course -- more complicated than what OS is on the servers.)
Then why it it mentioned in the summary?
The Windows Server 2003-based Macworld Expo site folded under all those hits, while Apple's sites, running Mac OS X, were only knocked into sluggishness.
:)
Yea, and i'm sure the fact that author linked Macworld Expo site from a slashdot article just a *pure coincidence*
Windows' TCP/IP stack is known to suck compared to various *NIXs.
I recall years ago having a 450 MHz AMD K6-2 LINUX box with 128 MB of RAM consistently beating out a 900 MHz Athlon with 768 MB of RAM (running Windows) when it came to downloads over my broadband connection.
Given Mac OS X's pedigree, this does not surprise me.
"Macintosh vs. Windows" is totally irrelevant here... but given that Macintoshes now use an OS based on UNIX, it certainly makes them stand out.
I might also point out that Hotmail for a time (and may very well still be) was using FreeBSD for its DNS servers... that's because when MS tried using their own "dogfood" (Windows 2000), it keeled over.
-M
"The Windows Server 2003-based MacWorld Expo site folded under all those hits, while Apple's sites, running Mac OS X, were only knocked into sluggishness. (Server load is a complex thing, of course -- more complicated than what OS is on the servers.)"
And that's of course why I mentioned OS first and foremost in my summary...
In other news, people die all the time, but a good number die from being shot by a Colt gun. That's "Colt" spelled "C-o-l-t". Of course, death is a complex thing, much more complicated that what gun is used.
> Windows ... folded ... only sluggishness
> Mac OS X
> Server load is a complex thing, of course -- more complicated than what OS is on the servers.
But hey, here on Slashdot we'll take any excuse to bash Microsoft and applaud Apple!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Heavy bandwidth usage tends to be a very normal occurrence on fansites at any rate. For a while now, Apple Rumors and MacNN switch to low-bandwidth versions during the keynote, and even these sites were swamped.
MacRumors was pretty much down after iWork was announced.
MacNN had a 403 between when iDVD was discussed and when the Mac Mini was mentioned.
Mac Teens performed the best, but started to get intermittent towards the end (probably due to a cascade effect of people fleeing from one working site to another)
Engadget was fairly unreliable, but a little better off than MacNN.
http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jan/macworld/20 05/macworld_300_100_56_ref.mov
Enjoy.
OK, so there was a single server hosting macworld's site, and Apple have 1000 xserves behind some load balancers?
I mean come on people. How much *money* you spend on your net infrastructure dictates how well it will
survive.
Apple spent enough, Macworld didn't. Get over it. Why is this a story?
Even with the help of Akamai (I presume) the keynote quicktime stream was problematic. I couldn't watch it without frames dropping and sound going away. Time outs were often... a real pain. Increasing the buffer, using TCP instead of UDP did not help either.
If I remember correctly it wasn't like this last year... I guess Apple created a lot of buzz this time.
Cheers,
Ian
It seems to me that Macworld should host on Macs (or Unix or Linux). Anybody know why they don't? I know "there's no such thing as bad publicity", but "Macworld's WINDOWS SERVERS went down" is pretty close.
Doesn't Apple also server a lot of stuff through Akami? (Which they partly own I believe.)
Once I started calculating the extras, bluetooth, keyboard, mouse, dvi switch, ram ... I was up to about $1000.
1.) How many servers does Apple have load balancing their front end? 2.) How many servers does the MWSF have on their front end? Microsoft's own site is one of the heaviest hit sites around, has thousands of attempted attacks and plenty of people trying to DOS it, but it still continues to run rather well.
Just think about it for a minute:
:)
*Apple* MacWorld event almost killed *Microsoft* Windows Server 2003-based site.
Mwa-ha-ha!
The real question is why the submitter had to act like there was some other reason for the difference. Oh yeah, unless you bend over backward and consider all software equal, or everything inferior to M$, you are a Zealot.
Sorry, but reality is not always what the Microsoft PR department wants. The Netcraft people did not mince words.
What happens when hordes of Mac enthusiasts stress-test Apple and Microsoft products in head-to-head performance? ... Mac OS X, experienced some slowdowns but was largely available. Apple's online store (also on Mac OS X) struggled, however, experiencing outages and lengthy response times. Faring even worse was the official site for MacWorld Expo, which runs on Windows Server 2003, and was offline for hours following the show's keynote address by Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
The graphs show the thing off line all day.
There are a lot of things that are more complicated than your choice of OS, but we should not ignore the larger trends when looking at smaller details. Microsoft uptimes and security are lower than anyone else's and the average user experience will be poor. The exceptions simply prove the rule by surprising us.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Save for the fact that apple.com is powered by Mac OS X. Just check down on the front page. But man, the store was slow yesterday.
Not on your best day, punk. I only fornicate within my own species. Stick to your hand lotion and Kleenex.
I won't comment of how many does mac os x support..
there're a lot of things more important than the operatie system. Like for example, bandwith an hardware
Because that's all they knew and all they could say. OSX up, OSX up and sluggish, M$ down all day. That's the news, and it's a common story.
Worms are another complex and common story.
Microsoft competitors software not working on Microsoft OS are another complex and common story.
BSA raids are another complex and common story.
When you look into the details of these complex stories you usually find something unflattering to Microsoft. Microsoft uptimes are low and in some cases reboot is enforced by the OS every 14 days. 90% of all spam originates from worm infested M$ OS. Microsoft's anti competitive behavior was detailed and documented in weeks of testimony by industry leaders during the anti-turst trials. The BSA encourages disgruntled employees to slander employers, so that raids can be conducted. In all of these things, M$ PR has slick answers. Every now and then we find an exception, so cautious people hold their tongue (sometimes in cheek, as Netcraft's quote of PaidContent, which flattered M$) when they don't know.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If somebody doesn't make a Netcraft joke soon I'll just die.
If you could be anything you want, I'll bet you'd be disappointed.
This is exactly what came to mind when I read this "news" clip. This type of presentation is shameful!
... but why would the MacWorld Expo be using Windows Server 2003 rather than Mac OS X Server? It's not like they don't have the contacts to do so, and it kind of defeats the the whole purpose of the expo which is to promote the Macintosh.
Both groups did what they thought would be enough. One group failed. I doubt either were crimped for cash. Why make excuses when you don't really know what happened?
What software you put on the same hardware makes a big difference too. If I had a single PC I can promise you that Apache would do better than IIS and cost less. In commercial settings with all the money in the world to spend, you might recall the Microsoft Hotmail dissaster. It's a dramatic enough demonstration of the difference an OS makes.
In this case, all we know is OSX 2, M$ 0. That's what was reported. It's not surprising, and even you yawned.
The astroturf responses are thick today. Lots of "The article is flamebait", many "there's got to be mitigating circumstances" and a few "but the OSX performance really was horrible". It's curious how many posts have been moderated as insightful or informative for pointing out nothing. It would be nice to see something from someone who knows what happened instead of all of the above crap.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Good Boy! Now go lie down.
"The avalanch has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." -Kosh
And now it's being slashdotted.
"Inflammable means flammable? What a strange country!" -Dr. Nick, The Simpsons
I do 95% of my programming at work on MS Windows systems, and after watching the Mac Expo, I think it would be a real joy to come home and use a Mac. While I am not a Steve groupie, I have to say that the guy is 1,000x more "cool" then Bill G was during the CES show MS did. Bill was so stiff and dry, now I know why MS brought in that late night talk show host, to try to bring some life to the show. Bill G. made the keynote as exiting to watch as paint drying.
In contrast, Steve was cracking jokes and made watching actually fun. Steve had a small systems glitch, just like Bill/MS did. However, Steve paused for a moment, and then said, "this is why we have backups", flipped a KVM switch and had another Mac ready to roll in on second, and the show went on smooth-as-silk.
The demos were actually very good, and I was surprised to see Steve do them all, well except for the Pages demo. Bill's demo of the new media center was _very_ boring, and when the remote didn't work, they had no backup system and just "moved along", the same thing happened when their XBox blue-screened. Come on MS, get a little style and maybe next time take a tip from Apple and have a backup system.
I am looking forward to the Mac Mini and iLife 05. The only thing I wish the Mac Mini had was more video memory. 32MB is a little low for todays standards and it doesn't look like you can upgrade the video. Other then that, it looks like a great system. Maybe the Mac Mini can hook my wife on Apple and she won't complain when I try to buy a G5 box. ; P
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Why were they running on Windows in the first place? They probably don't know how to properly configure Windows anyway.
Must-not-watch TV!
My gut reaction to the announcement was that the lack of live webcast was due to political reasons. Jobs (and Apple) are rightly pissed at the mac rumor sites releasing trade secrets, preliminary specs and prices, and stealing their thunder. As big as this expo was, coverage provided like the original Apple blueberry flavored iMac would have been huge. Instead they get pundits saying Apple "barely kept their head above level of expetations today" and crap like that. The rumor sites get a lot of their revenue from the ad hits. When people flood their site looking for confirmation or live transcript they get mucho money. My guess is that publicity that no webcast would be available was Apple's attempt to kill these leeches revenue streams.
After seeing the traffic reports though, I reach two conclusions. First is that the amount of traffic for a webcast would probably have been huge. Second is that even the post webcast feed has been very laggy and spotty; I imagine that their live broadcast would have been worse. People are saying the huge traffic hits that brought down the Apple store are negatives for WebObjects and the Oracle backend (which, after a certain point of traffic levels, is a crap way to pinpoint failure).
I've found that some websites have posted outlines of what was covered in the Keynote and at what times each "section" started. So I got my news of events from Macintouch (a reputable mac news blog that doesn't traffic rumors), subtracted the time of the keynote start from their list, and then had a nice index to watch the key points of the weblog I was really interested in seeing (the Mac mini launch, the Garage Band demo, and a few others).
Who knows I still may try to stream the whole webcast next week when traffic has died down, just to get the "color" of Jobs slick presentation style. But for now traffic is still a big problem for me at least.
The number of pages served matters most. I'll bet apple did much better per machine. Also they were slow but stayed up under much larger loads.
Note to the MS boxed crashed, so didn't even work..
Different traffic, different content & different hardware. Perfect situation to make a valid comparison. That's one mighty important news story to relay on slashdot.
Good job editor(s).
You don't have to. You just have to be careful not to scratch the shit out of the case when you take it apart to put in the RAM, then remember to take out the RAM you added in the event that you ever have to send/take it in for warranty repair. Oh, and also remember to edit that system profile report before you email it to Apple so that it doesn't show the extra RAM, in case anyone is checking (unlikely, but possible). ;->
If it's good enough for cable news, it's good enough for MS haters. -idea stolen from yesterdays The Daily Show.
I had so much trouble using the configurator/online store to buy the MiniMac. This looks very promising, hopefully Apple builds market share to force itself to be more competitive AND force the other players to step up in the innovation department. Sadly, Microsoft usually keeps Apple in check. I wonder what the reaction in Redmond is to to iWorks and the MiniMac. Office:Mac is a very powerful card.
thousands?
Try millions...
The Apple store kept dropping my connection when I tried to configure a Mac mini at home. A half an hour later, from the show floor, everything was snappy.
I kindof wonder if Apple has a whole set of servers dedicated to connections coming from the show floor. So Steve's presentation stays snappy when he plays with the iTunes Music Store. Hell, maybe they have a whole set of servers physically at MacWorld, so they don't have to worry about internet connectivity while Steve does his thing.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
The Yugo GT exploded into a ball of flames near the end of the 3 lap of the race while the Ferrari was only knocked into sluggishness by the excessive heat of the day. (Car performance is a complex thing, of course -- more complicated that what engine is in the cars)
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
With a SuperDrive, Bluetooth 2.0 + Airport Extreme, 512MB RAM (will probably crack open and put in a 1GB module), an 80GB drive, and .Mac (for antivirus and etc.) it came to $999.98. I was *expecting* it to be around $1k and I think the price is right.
This will be the first Mac I've owned. I've been looking at the platform since OS X and recently evaluated the new iMac and 17" PowerBook. The Mac mini is exactly what I was looking for - a low cost entry-level system. All the Unix goodness with a nice interface. If the platform works for me (for development), then I'll pop for a 17" G5 PowerBook when they roll out.
MacWorldExpo.com is dead.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
"The Windows Server 2003-based MacWorld Expo site folded under all those hits, while Apple's sites, running Mac OS X, were only knocked into sluggishness. (Server load is a complex thing, of course -- more complicated than what OS is on the servers.)"
If this was a Windows-based syteme, there would be no end to the ridicule. But it's unix and Apple, so let's make excuses for our incompetence.
Are you sure?
Here are tons of people, myself included, telling you that Apple.com was not reachable. And here is you - one guy who got in but knows "for an absolute fact" that the site was good. Should we believe one person's experience or what the rest of the us actually experienced?
I know this is common for Slashdot readers but next time, please try to be less arrogant.
Well, with the notion of Mac users bringing down the site, it seems we help with Slashdotting it. Its like a good DDoS attack. :-P
When they make it SOOO easy! Their well known security issues, the kludgy software, the shady buisness practices, ect. We all know the litany. Fish in a barrel! Fire away!
Just for clarification: /. story.
IDG World Expo produces the Macworld Expo event. The site in question macworldexpo.com is their site, used for event registration, schedules etc.
Macworld.com, Macworld Magazine's website, remained up through the keynote (with some slowdowns), and provided live coverage of the event. Linked to from a previous
Disclosure: I work for Macworld Magazine.
As I understand it, the Apple Store is a secure shopping cart web app that employs SSL. If the images are hosted on a different box, how do they get around the SSL message visitors always get when the images aren't served through the same webserver? I'm asking because I want to be able to offload graphics from my ssl server...
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
...the free sites are already offering it.
http://free.GearLive.com/index.php?referral=146
Go ahead, rate me a troll. But information is information, use the link if you're interested, ignore me otherwise. No need to flame.
Oh crap, GNU makes it 4!
... all under the sway of the fifth, dominant voice, the false doctor voice. This voice will be at the Holiday Inn Spot in Nashua, New Hampshire in Room 39 all weekend. Do not visit him.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
I couldn't actually tell if the site was slow at first because I was reading the new blurbs via GPRS on the bus to work, and via GPRS everything is slow.
But when I got to work I noticed the picture quality had dropped drastically. Visible compression artifacts, colour banding, etc. Looks like they scrunched the pictures down in a hurry to save bandwidth?
So pathetic.
Also because they're not astroturfing for Microsoft.
Wanna know what "Linux Magazine" Editor-in-Chief M.Streicher thinks of Mac OS X Server?
h tm l
http://www.linux-mag.com/2004-08/pr_panther_01.
By the way, look at "Frankenstein" configuration.