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Mozilla Outage On Firefox 3 Record Launch Day

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the oops-sorry-that-was-me dept.

Kolargol00 writes "An outage affected the Mozilla.com website on the day the organisation launched its Guinness World Record attempt for downloads of the new Firefox 3 browser. The mozilla.com site was unreachable from around the world, occasionally responding with the message, 'Http/1.1 Service Unavailable.'" Since they decided to run their day from 1pm to 1pm Eastern time, the download day is actually still going, so you can still get Firefox and be part of the record.

16 of 427 comments (clear)

  1. Download Counter by magister159 · · Score: 5, Informative

    As unwise as it may be to post a link to the download counter on slashdot, you can find a real time counter here.

    By my calculations, they won't be able to hit the 10 million mark in time.

    1. Re:Download Counter by pdusen · · Score: 3, Informative

      What 10 million mark? Their stated goal was 1.5 million, and now they're over 6. They've well-surpassed their mark.

    2. Re:Download Counter by paroneayea · · Score: 4, Informative

      True, unlikely they'll meet the 10 million mark. But originally they were setting a goal of 5 million. Seeing as how it's well over 6 million when I'm writing this, I'd say they're doing a damn fine job.

      --
      http://mediagoblin.org/
    3. Re:Download Counter by Dak+RIT · · Score: 3, Informative

      According to Mozilla's own FAQ, There's currently no official record (for the Guinness Book of World Records), so whatever number they end up at is going to be the record.

      However, as many people have pointed out several times already, there's probably a lot of things that get more downloads.

      It's worth noting though that one of the requirements for the record is that all the downloads should be human initiated (so turn off your download bots).

    4. Re:Download Counter by 0232793 · · Score: 3, Informative

      http://www.onflex.org/ted/2008/05/mozilla-world-record-problems.php is the blog entry

  2. Not impressed with the way this was conducted by Metasquares · · Score: 3, Informative

    It seems like they really botched this, from not knowing when the date would be until last week to starting the day at 1 PM without getting the word out and now to their site going down in the middle of it.

  3. Re:Microsoft-DDOS? by CDMA_Demo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Makes sense. The IE team at MS loves firefox: http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/06/17/the-cake-is-a-lie-ie-team-bakes-a-treat-for-mozilla

  4. Actually, it's 2:16 p.m. to 2:16 p.m. by Robotech_Master · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Firefox people decided to start counting the 24 hours at 11:16 a.m. Pacific, after they got their servers back up and everything straightened out.

    So take heart, frustrated downloaders: you have 76 more minutes than you thought.

    --
    Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
  5. Re:And THIS is why you use a CDN of some sort... by jrumney · · Score: 5, Informative

    Mozilla does have a content distribution network. www.mozilla.com is an alias for www-mozilla-com.geo.mozilla.com, which resolves to several different addresses at different times even from the same location. The downloads are further passed off to various mirror servers around the world.

  6. Re:Not counted by frission · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you wanted to be counted, you can download it and NOT install it.

  7. Re:Did RC3 become the final release? by glorpy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes and yes.

  8. Re:Potentially harmful? by Albanach · · Score: 5, Informative

    You might want to read this from Microsoft. In particular, take a look at the setting for DefaultFileTypeRisk

  9. Re:Pointy Haired Wisdom by burris · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can't easily count bittorrent downloads, especially since they are only counting completed downloads.

    As soon as a client completes a download it makes an HTTP connection to the tracker and says it is complete. This is why every BT tracker/index-site is able to display a counter for complete downloads. Are you sure you know how BitTorrent works?
  10. Portable Apps by flyingfsck · · Score: 4, Informative

    Three cheers for Portable Apps!

    I'm happily running Firefox 3 on my locked down corporate laptop.

    W00t!

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  11. Re:OSS Incompetence by Ex-MislTech · · Score: 3, Informative

    A torrent redirect would have served just as well,
    and I think total downloads could still be tracked.

    With it being a torrent all the ppl downloading would
    have taken a LOT of load off the servers.

    --
    google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
  12. Re:Cause found, not to worry. by morcego · · Score: 3, Informative

    Out of legitimate curiosity, why do many Slashdotters think that Microsoft sees Firefox as a threat?


    Because they do, and rightly so.

    Remember then they took Netscape down ? That should be enough proof for anyone.

    As for the reasons. Lets remember that marketing wars are fought and won on a single battlefield: the mind. Keeping your brand strong is very important. When people start using non-microsoft solutions for something, they are likely to start using non-microsoft solutions for others. Microsoft always made a lot of money pushing the idea they alone can provide solutions. People who start using Firefox are more likely to look toward OpenOffice.org.

    The "search engine" issue was pointed by others, and is also relevant.
    --
    morcego