Slashdot Mirror
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!"
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
or does it look *exactly* like the Galaxy? *ducks*
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I own an Android, and have no interest in getting an iPhone, but I think it's worth being clear that not all iPhone owners, or even the majority of them, buy the phone as a status symbol. It's only the people who run out to buy each new model as it's launched, even though their old one is perfectly good, who are guilty of conspicuous consumption.
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
Something cannot be "par" and a status symbol at the same time.
It seems to me that if you're making this argument, you're just as positionally-conscious as the iSheep (or whatever we'd like to call them), you just use different criteria, no doubt better criteria that is obviously more aligned with value than those other people you don't understand. /s
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
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.
I think he's saying that the phones used to be leading edge technically, but now they're at the same level or lower than the high-end Android phones ... but people still seem to be treating having an Apple phone as a status symbol. Because of the level of technology it's become more obvious that it is a status symbol.
As a conspicuous consumption item, the iphone 4S is actually a big bucket o fail: it looks the same as the old one. How many people griped that it didn't look like the "iPhone 5" leaks?!?
And I just bought mine (finally shifting from a dumb phone) for the technology.
The screen really is brilliant, and I wouldn't want a bigger screen (read, block-o-stuff) in my pocket, it can now actually work as a phone, the iOS app ecology is better established, the processor is excellent, and it really is an easy to use smartphone.
Although Siri still refuses to open the pod bay doors.
Test your net with Netalyzr
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 think the iPhone's circumstance as a status symbol has always been rather patent.
The interesting fact is that a Nexus S or a Blackberry or a Droid Bionic are also status symbols -- just because your phone runs a different OS, or it has twice the RAM, that doesn't suddenly make your purchase decision perforce more rational or less status-conscious. The fact that Android and Blackberrys (not so much the second one lately) have defenders and people proudly stating their ownership on this forum clearly demonstrates that owning these phones confers status and attributes the owner with a particular set of values, independent of the actual rational decision to buy the thing.
I just don't think the "status symbol" argument is a useful one -- everybody buys status, and people who run around with Frodo t-shirts and Star Trek bumper stickers (that's me) and hiking boots that never see a dirt road should probably be careful about how they critique social signaling.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
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
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
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 went and bought one this morning at the AT&T store. The store opened at 8:00, I arrived at about 7:55 and there were probably about 20 people in line ahead of me. 45 minutes later, I had my new iPhone.
...thousands of UPS and FedEx drivers today.
neither of my phones worked for 3 hours until the servers got caught up a bit. Very annoying
Wait... are you talking about Apple or RIM here?
Trolling is a art,
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
So, the non-status-conscious Android user proceeds from the assumption that only status-seekers buy iPhones.
Right?
Methinks thou dost protest too much. Why the hell do you care what other people do with their money? Why do you think it's important to belittle them?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Or, perhaps, feature lists (or "levels of technology") are not what people care about.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
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.
You mean the Galaxy S2? The Nexus S is from December of last year. Also, they don't require the same activation via server that the iPhone does... It's almost like they thought ahead about this.
-]Phreak Out[-
iPhone User: "I love my phone."
Android User: "I hate your phone."
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
yes, by wording on my part. On par, as in equal to.
Again, my bad.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Should have outsourced that to a Google cloud, they do that number every day for a year now no problem.
Did you read my link? Apparently some Apple fanboi with mod points didn't.
", even though their old one is perfectly good, who are guilty of conspicuous consumption"
which would be a majority of people in that line. I mean, why wait in an Apple line, when you could walk 50 feet and get the same thing if you aren't there as a status symbol?
Everyone does conspicuous consumption. I now make a point of thinking if that's the reasons I make purchase. And yes, sometime I make the purchase anyways.
I was just amused to find such a vibrant real world text book example
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I disagree. At the beginning it was a good leap in what we could carry around. Music, phone, good interface. Usable, useful, and practical. It developed into a status symbol item.
It was an observation of an interesting phenomena playing out it real time.
Personally, I try very hard to be sure Im not making a purchase for status.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Maybe it has to do with some people who actually want an iPhone but haven't been able to get one because they were on Verizon or Sprint. Or they were not yet eligible for an upgrade on AT&T. But let's stick with the iPhone is a status symbol because it fits your meme without any thought about the situation.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Maybe usability is more important to some people than the number of cycles the processor runs. Maybe.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I don't hate the iPhone.
Never have.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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?
Other than the fact that current RIM users had their service go down for no explainable reason for 3 days. With Apple and AT&T, their new phone isn't activated instantly when they wanted. They might have to wait a few hours. Until then, I understand they could use their current phone.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Browser with incognito mode.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The problem with "Android" is that it rhymes with "Hemorrhoid".
Why would anyone want to buy something that sounds like a condition that is a huge pain in the ass?
They had a top notch cool phone, but now it's par, if not lagging behind many android devises.
Citation needed.
And, let's make it clear, you won't find a citation to support your comment because it is false.
Here - unlike you, I'll back up my claim:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4951/iphone-4s-preliminary-benchmarks-800mhz-a5-slightly-slower-gpu-than-ipad-2
The iPhone 4S is faster than virtually every mobile device currently on the market with the sole exception of a two top-tier tablets (the iPad 2 and, in one test, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which have more space enabling more power). Against other phones, the 4S is currently ahead of everything else.
So, how is it that you can claim that the iPhone 4S is only on par, if not lagging behind Android devices when the facts don't support that?
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."
That's just not true. Design does not mean shiny. Design means good engineering, and good user interface. That is what I am paying for. I'm also paying for the superb customer service I've gotten from Apple over the last 20 years.
Never been cool, never will be. Status is irrelevant. Design is relevant. Customer support is relevant. Technical aspects of the phone aren't irrelevant by any means, but they're not the most important thing.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Not only is the hardware top notch but he overlooks the most important reason the iphone still blows away the competition. Apple's development pipeline uses "native executable code" resulting in apps that run far faster and much more efficient. The hardware is as near standard as possible allowing developers to easily target a known platform. Then we get to the market vs the app store, there is no comparison the app store wins hands down.
Got Code?
neither of my phones worked for 3 hours until the servers got caught up a bit.
Makes you wonder what they're doing so wrong on their activation servers.
100,000 per day still only amounts to a little over one per second. Even allowing for peaks, that shouldn't saturate even a moderately specced server. What are they running on, G3 XServes?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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?
Other than the fact that current RIM users had their service go down for no explainable reason for 3 days. With Apple and AT&T, their new phone isn't activated instantly when they wanted. They might have to wait a few hours.
I don't know how RIM users in other countries fared, but I had blackberry email delays for about 4 hours before it cleared up. Annoying, but not enough to make me move from Blackberry for corporate use.
Until then, I understand they could use their current phone.
Except, of course, those people that bought a new phone rather than a replacement.
Are you saying that BOTH the AT&T store and Best Buy HAD THEM IN STOCK at the same moment there was a line at the Apple store?
If so, then I might agree with you... If not, maybe the Apple Store had them in stock.. Also, haven't you ever seen a movie on the opening day? I haven't in a long time, and would tend to not do it nowadays.. but have done it, and would do it for the right movie.
YEs they do require the same activation, you just don't notice because despite what you may think no carrier has sold even half that many of any Android phones in a day...One did reach about half in a weekend though. Not sure why you think the carrier doesn't have to activate Android phones.
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.
maybe you should take the stand in the Apple vs Samsung trial
lucm, indeed.
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.
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.
And it uses the same micro SIM card too!
--
no sig for you. come back one year.
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)
100,000 in a day isn't particularly great anyway on AT&T though, what happened to Apple having massive preorders that were supposedly newsworthy last week? Android sees around 300,000 activations on a normal day let alone near release, and the iPhone 4 (not the 4S) had just short of a million.
This seems to be an admittance that the iPhone 4S is a bit of a flop after all despite the pre-order hype. Certainly those sales figures are a little underwhelming compared to releases of previous iPhones.
But the real question is why the activation troubles this time? They handled a much higher load at the iPhone 4 release.
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.
This.
I have an iPhone 4 and have no plans to upgrade to the 4s until its at least 2 years old. I boggle at the people who upgrade every year, but oh well, it's their money. I'm glad they're helping the economy. :)
Ha, Android user here that says "I love this tool for communication and entertainment and I love the non-walled garden freedom I got with it"
I feel sorry for the iPhone users that they don't have the same without jailbreaking it.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
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 ;)
Check the status at http://www.sprint.com/bringyournumber/ - if it says your port status is complete, then either do an iTunes or iCloud backup of your new phone, then go to Settings > General > Reset > Erase all Content and Settings. That will put your phone back in factory setup mode, and your phone should then get your new number. Then you can restore your backup and happiness will resume :)
"We actually have a new metric to report of 550,000 Android Devices activated a day! "
https://plus.google.com/106189723444098348646/posts/dRtqKJCbpZ7
That's not quite true - the reason that RIM's network went down certainly was completely explainable, but RIM just didn't deign to explain it. I find that difference important, and it's another reason to avoid all things Blackberry for me.
Sure it can. Status = normal -> Have sex with, no red flags.
100,000 in a day isn't particularly great anyway on AT&T though, what happened to Apple having massive preorders that were supposedly newsworthy last week? Android sees around 300,000 activations on a normal day let alone near release, and the iPhone 4 (not the 4S) had just short of a million.
I think the problem of AT&T not being to handle 100K is not the number but that it is the additional number on top of normal activations they might have had that day and their systems can't handle the excess not the capacity. And the Android activation number is across all carriers not just one carrier.
and the iPhone 4 (not the 4S) had just short of a million. This seems to be an admittance that the iPhone 4S is a bit of a flop after all despite the pre-order hype. Certainly those sales figures are a little underwhelming compared to releases of previous iPhones.
According to wiki, Apple pre-sold 600K iPhones last year when they launched the iPhone 4 with 1.7M in the first 3 days after launch. According to Apple this year, they pre-sold 1M. It does not appear that the numbers support your contention. While the iPhone 4S isn't overwhelming the pundits and they have declared it will flop, most of them seem to forget that not everyone can upgrade their phones whenever a new model comes out. Some people have to upgrade every other model. In this case, AT&T customers who bought the 3GS new are now eligible for an upgrade. For Sprint customers, this is the first time they can get an iPhone. For Verizon customers, those that could not get a new phone last year can get one now. For someone who has a iPhone 4, there isn't a big leap to the 4S, but for those who had the 3GS, it is a big leap.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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."
Personally, I try very hard to be sure Im not making a purchase for status.
Why? Do you think status is an invalid reason to buy something? Normally I'd consider that a rather subjective value judgement.
Maybe you're insecure. Maybe you think you'll look like a chump if you buy a popular thing. Deciding you won't buy something for "status" is really just a way of saying "I'm buying something that rejects prevailing trends." Of course, that still makes the phone you buy a status symbol, it's just tuned to a different value system and peers.
Nobody needs a dual-core 1GHz cellphone with a gig of RAM; all the marginal attributes are really just an expression of yourself and your subjective values.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.