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100,000 iPhones Overwhelm Activation Server
dstates writes "What happens when Apple ships 100,000 iPhone 4S in a day? Answer, 100,000 users all try to activate their new phones. AT&T's activation servers are struggling under the load. Apparently Verizon and Sprint are doing a better job keeping up with the load." Adds an anonymous optimist: "The solution? Call AT&T by dialing 611 and talking to an operator to perform a manual activation with your IMEI and SIM card #, works every time!"
A few weeks ago, I heard all *sorts* of haters saying this phone wouldn't succeed... Never underestimate hype. Ever.
I tried that, all that happened was neither of my phones worked for 3 hours until the servers got caught up a bit. Very annoying
for the time when the AT&T 611 hotline gets Slashdotted.
Call AT&T by dialing 611 and talking to an operator to perform a manual activation
So now you'll just be overwhelming the meatbag variety of server.
Surprise of the day: AT&T activation servers work roughly as well as their cell coverage in urban areas.
Note that if you can't activate your iPhone, you can't drop calls!!!
Write boring code, not shiny code!
First it's, "you're holding it wrong," now it's, "you're activating it wrong".
Can't blame this one on Steve.
Activated using the dial in number from my old phone.
It asked me to turn off my new phone for five minutes. I did so.
I turned it on after 5 minutes to my delight... AT&T 3g
There was a very short on hold while "Please wait while AT&T activates your phone" had me on hold. But it was maybe 45 seconds.
Number I called: 866-895-1099
"Activating" a cellphone means little less than recovering a few personal details from the new customer, the phone's serial number or equivalent, stuffing everything in a database, working out some magic number based on some algorithm and send it back to the phone. Big deal... I can write an application like that without even being a specialist and not hose a small server with a million requests a day, let alone 100,000...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Seriously, that's all this had become. They had a top notch cool phone, but now it's par, if not lagging behind many android devises. SO technology isn't the reason people buy them
I was at the mall, huge line, probably 150 people to get into the Apple store. Not 50 feet away is an AT&T store, also selling them. No Line.
I swung buy Best Buy, no line.
So, people are clearly getting them as a status symbol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
or does it look *exactly* like the Galaxy? *ducks*
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
100,000 AT&T activations, out of well over 1M sales!?!?
If so, most people have heeded the advice: Sprint is cheaper, and Verizon you can make phone calls on.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Let's be honest, Samsung only wishes it could overload AT&Ts servers with Nexus S activations.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Their servers can't handle 100,000 connections? o.O
That doesn't really seem like that much for one of the biggest internet/phone/communication companies in the U.S./world.
Optus in Australia has this problem too. Almost no one switching from them to another phone provider (and taking their phone number with them), was able to make the switch. Additionally, their website was down almost all yesterday.
All the other providers seemed to have managed it a lot better.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Buy an Android
For what?
In case anyone thinks that the US has good/solid infrastructure, remember this moment.
The AT&T network is so poor that it bogs down when a vendor comes out with a popular new phone.
Now let's see if you can actually make a call while in Manhattan.
I'm moving to sprint... well... sometime.... I don't know if its slowness on the AT&T side, but I've been waiting since 10am for my number to port, sprint has told me over the course of the day within 30 minutes (at the counter after signing the contract), within 2 hours (when I called at noon), within 12 hours (when I called at 4), and now 24-48 hours (just now)... at this rate, by tomorrow afternoon they will tell me in a month or two...
Like I said, I suspect its probably AT&T's systems that are overloaded... but its not the best first impression.
People assume slowdowns are always linear, so they get the wrong answers, and under-provision all the time (;-))
Assume a really fast activation in 1/10 second, on a machine that's always got 10 CPUs free for the activation jobs. Each CPU will activate 10 phones in 1 second, but if 11 people per CPU request activation, the 11th will wait a full tenth before they start, plus 1/10 second to do the work. The 12th will wait 2/10 plus 1/10 to do the work, and so on.
100,000 people / 10 CPUs = a load of 10,000 users. Plug that into the queuing equation from which I got the above, and the average time to activate will be 999.1 seconds, or 16 minutes. Not fun!
The actual case is probably a lot worse, with slow activations and overloaded servers, but any time when you can get a really large number of users trying to do something in a short period of time, the average time to do the work will be scary large. Unless they just happen to be within the first 10 callers, of course!
That means that you need to temporarily allocate a hugely larger number of resources than you'd expect on first glance. If you and your manager don't already know that the response time curve looks like a hockey stick, you can easily get into a career-limiting situation by under-planning for a predicted overload.
--dave (wearing his capacity planner hat) c-b
davecb@spamcop.net
Tragic... First World Problems.
DONT FOLLOW THIS ADVICE: Adds an anonymous optimist: "The solution? Call AT&T by dialing 611 and talking to an operator to perform a manual activation with your IMEI and SIM card #, works every time!" It will brick your phone (Apple's servers will reject your phone due to "mismatched SIM" and it will refuse to activate) and you will need to go to an Apple Store for a replacement. I spent all fucking day doing this.
sexy times
...thousands of UPS and FedEx drivers today.
Only took me 2 tries, at about 7pm est.
mod me funny
It is both CDMA and GSM in the same phone.
All US carriers lock the phones.
But the 4S actually is a true world phone, so after you've been "good" for 2 months Verizon will release the Sim Lock and you can put your prepaid burner sim in it, and until then they will provide a sim if you want pricey roaming before then.
This is actually better than AT&T which just won't release the sim lock AFAIK.
Test your net with Netalyzr
RIMs servers go down/can't keep up to the demand on their infrastructure after a hardware failure, and it is the end of the company.
Apple can't keep up with new registrations, and it is a success.
Here in Japan, the same thing is happening to Softbank. My coworker was told to wait a little while before coming to get his phone because the server had crashed.
For what?
A phone YOU can own.
A phone that'll work as soon as you take it out of the box.
A phone that doesn't need to call Big Brother for permission before letting you use it.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
...works right out of the box. No activation nonsense. And it's pretty nice. But you can't have one. Sorry.
Should have outsourced that to a Google cloud, they do that number every day for a year now no problem.
I'm not in danger of ever buying an iThing, but I like it that people get excited about new tech things. It means that technology still has the power to move us emotionally as humans. It means new stuff is still happening. The tech can touch our hearts. Otherwise it's boring.
Me, I like boring. I like letting everybody else try the new thing usually - the only exception these last 30 years being the Asus Transformer I bought on launch day. But the idea that tech has the ability to move us emotionally gives me hope that it's on the right track maybe.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I take it you've never actuated a phone before?
Browser with incognito mode.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
you could wait a month or two.
ok, start swinging.
suckers....that's all I have to say....
I take it you've never actuated a phone before?
Let me guess, you used Siri to post that?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
My understanding was that AT&T had 200,000 in just pre-orders.
The server accepted my request, but said that it will take some time to process (or something like that) and that I'll receive an email from them - and that in the meantime, the iPhone is available to configure. So, since then I've putting all my media, etc. on it. Still no email from AT&T, though. It's been like five hours.
Apple's servers will reject your phone due to "mismatched SIM" and it will refuse to activate
Now there's a perfectly ordinary sentence. Why the hell does Apple's server or any services Apple offers need to be attached to the phone rather than to a customer account?
I'm looking forward to at least these stories in 24 hours:
"New iPhones charging now placing extra demand on grid".
Then "New iPhone users excited over new iPhone after hours of using it".
Shortly thereafter "New iPhones causes mass colds from people having stood in line for it".
Followed by "New iPhones keep sniffling users company in bed."
and "New iPhone's Siri sings Lullabies for better recovery."
Not to forget "New iPhone shares Steve Jobs' home recipe for chicken soup"
and "New iPhone possession nears 2nd day..."
People....I wish, there was an app to use the iPhone as a fever thermometer, so you can FINALLY SHOVE IT UP YOU ASS!!
and shouldn't read slasdot because you fall for marketing gimmicks.
First, you mean activated.
Second, I'm not him, but I've never activated a phone. You put the battery in, turn the phone on, set the date and time, and it's alive -- all software works, you can get a WLAN connection and do any internet stuff, everything. If you already put your SIM in, you'll have WWAN & voice service as well; if not (say you kept the SIM in your old phone until the new one is fully charged, etc.), shut it off, put the SIM in, power it back up, and you're on!
No "activation" involved -- same story for a couple dumbphones, a couple featurephones, and a smartphone. Any phones that make you activate/register them before you can use them are defective by design -- the only justification for it is a total reliance on "cloud" services, thus making the phone useless without registration, and that's a bug, not a feature.
Again, a company's servers overload due to totally predictable load. Outsource a bit of that load to AC2 or some other service of the like on the week of release to prevent this next time, AT&T and every other company that has people download mass amounts of data.
Why do you need an activation server at all for???
If done right the subscription you have shall already be activated, or activated when you purchase it.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Apple sells 80+ million iPhones annually.
That's roughly 250 thousands per day on average.
Now think how "impressive" are 1 million 4S pre-orders and 100k activations per day.
I haven't. Why would I? I don't rent my phones from carriers.
That would be, because the first thing that the phone does when it's turned on is... wait for it... contacts the activation server silently and activates itself. All phones must do this – it's simply a matter of registering that the IMEI is in use, and with what SIM it's currently associated.
Notably, this is exactly what an iPhone does – you turn it on for the first time, you see the setup screens (no date and time because you know... it does that automatically), and while you fill in a form or two it activates itself.
So if a GSM has to active its GSM/IMEI combination before it can be used. How can you call an operator on that phone to active?
That would be, because the activation is at the network end –they allow calls from that IMEI/SIM combination if and only if it's activated, or the call is to an allowed number (e.g. the activation line, or 999)
They have some backend mainframe with all their customer data where they need to purchase more CPU cycles. So they can throw all the servers at them in the frontend and it won't matter because it costs a fortune to buy the extra cycles for a short spike.
It appears the poster made up the 100,000 number. It is not mentioned in the article. Based on the fact that Apple announced they had sold out of pre-orders at 1 million, and there is at least that many being sold in stores today, the number is probably closer to 1 million.
That 80 million annually is world wide. The iPhone 4S did not launch worldwide yesterday.
You probably gave the operator incorrect numbers.
I'm still doubting this happens on all GSMs. In al the years I've been using them I never ran into an activation of the device. I've been happily swapping SIM cards and phones/devices, they always immediatly work.
Obviously the SIM has to be enabled/activated, but all SIMs I received to date were already enabled. Either in a store or by mail (where the SIMs arrive and PIN arrive via separate paths).
So to me it sounds like AT&T is using a whitelist of IMEIs where all others appear to use a blacklist.
I'm still doubting this happens on all GSMs. In al the years I've been using them I never ran into an activation of the device. I've been happily swapping SIM cards and phones/devices, they always immediatly work.
That's because if it works correctly, it happens instantly, without you knowing it happened. Often, it's even done by the guy in the shop, who has your phone out the box and SIM in it before you can say "nooo, I like unwrapping things".
So to me it sounds like AT&T is using a whitelist of IMEIs where all others appear to use a blacklist.
That's a nice conspiracy you have there.
http://www.google.com/search?q=iphone+activation&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&lr=lang_en#pq=iphone+activation&hl=en&sugexp=kjrmc&cp=8&gs_id=8&xhr=t&q=iphone+4+activation&qe=aXBob25lIDQgYWN0aXZhdGlvbg&qesig=XLmPgR3zxn9b7jGXld54Ww&pkc=AFgZ2tlaUel7DP39FfKh34fxiYL1bHIbzn5WdbVX3hSy47HOmsADfaEgURfkrUAWR-BKQr3I9JAsxNpecw3Xs9tUpxxOE6HHiQ&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&lr=lang_en&safe=off&tbs=lr:lang_1en&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=iphone+4+activation&aq=0&aqi=g2g-c2&aql=f&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=8e7fa2636e8b849&biw=1920&bih=1034
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Ah, yes it did unless you don't consider Hong Kong, Japan and London worldwide.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
Nice... a load of videos showing how it used to work... but doesn't any more with the 4S ;)
"That's a nice conspiracy you have there."
IMEI doesn't matter in GSM, SIM is the Mechanism to Identify the customer (aka Subscriber). Why should a telco care what device anyone uses? There is no reason to block a specific IMEI other then when it is reported stolen. The fact that the IMEI in GSM is irrelevant for the network/device to function correctly, supports the idea that AT&T is whitelisting rather than blacklisting.
So what is actually activated? It certainly isn't the phone itself. But if a telco has problem with 100k SIMs being inserted on a day there is something very wrong with the telco.
"We actually have a new metric to report of 550,000 Android Devices activated a day! "
https://plus.google.com/106189723444098348646/posts/dRtqKJCbpZ7
Though if you're struggling to understand how Google search works, I'm beginning to see where your problem lies.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."