Delivery Day Bottleneck

[mQQm]

Hi

Just a thought, but on delivery day (which may be staggered) 3800ish people will probably try and download every scrap of available code. On preorder day the website crashed just from the volume of people refreshing the front page. Has anyone thought of using say, bittorrent as a delivery method rather than direct download or even newsgroups?

 

[absolofdoom]

I believe this was brought up before. The basic idea of the answer was that since people will get their pandoras as they're finished, and people live in different parts of the world, there won't be enough people downloading at once to cause a problem.

 

[phrosty]

stuff is being shipped out as it is finished. it won't all be delivered on the same day.

 

[jakewastaken]

Hi

Just a thought, but on delivery day (which may be staggered) 3800ish people will probably try and download every scrap of available code. On preorder day the website crashed just from the volume of people refreshing the front page. Has anyone thought of using say, bittorrent as a delivery method rather than direct download or even newsgroups?

People have in fact been kicking around the idea of making a torrent of all available files. I'm sure that there will be a bunch of mirrors popping up if anything happens. The archive is kind of bare at the moment though, so I don't think there will be too many bandwith issues. The files will probably be pretty tiny too, I'd imagine.

Considering what happened on pre-order day I bet they are aware of bandwith concerns.

 

[EvilDragon]

And even if there is a run - we got a new servers. That also fixed the problem last time
The site was back runniing as soon as we moved.

 

[timothee]

The bittorrent idea sounds great: a bittorrent-based solution could be considered for the pandora software, where the pandora archive could act as both the bittorrent tracker and seed for all packages.

That would ensure that all packages are always seeded, and caters for surge of downloads: the more people downloading, the faster it would get.

 

[DAP]

stuff is being shipped out as it is finished. it won't all be delivered on the same day.

The problem won't happen when people first get their pandoras, it will come after everyone has their pandoras, and the first major update comes out.

 

[john4p]

Could you make some stuff like the Amiga and SNES emulators available for download before delivery day?

 

[Pleng]

Could you make some stuff like the Amiga and SNES emulators available for download before delivery day?

That all depends on whether the Amiga and SNES emulator devs get their finished units before you. If you ordered outside the first hour or two, you should be pretty safe. If you ordered within the first 10 minutes, you might need to wait another day or two for the emulators.

Honestly. If I get my Pandy and there's nothing of note available to be gin with (I ordered mine within about 40 mins), then I'll be happy just to look at it and go 'ohhhhhhh' for the first couple of days. Maybe play with the nubs a bit...

 

[Squidge]

On preorder day the website crashed just from the volume of people refreshing the front page. Has anyone
That made the website slow, but I thought it was a DDOS that took down the website.

 

[john4p]

That all depends on whether the Amiga and SNES emulator devs get their finished units before you. If you ordered outside the first hour or two, you should be pretty safe. If you ordered within the first 10 minutes, you might need to wait another day or two for the emulators.

Damn. Now I'm in big trouble because I ordered very soon (about 4.15 pm on preorder day). :lol:

 

[dokworm]

I can upload a wad of it all to usenet (newsgroups) if that will be any help.

Man I wish I was one of "The 3800"

 

[craigix]

They will be shipping out slowly as someone has already pointed out, so it should be more like a flow than a flood.

There will be software ready before launch, we are not saying it will be perfect and polished (for example touch screen support in everything is unlikely), but it will work, most of it will be your favorite GP2X stuff.

 

[Joshwaan2k]

Sounds good, not sure if this has been asked but where will the units ship from US or UK?

 

[CCmachined]

They will be shipping out slowly as someone has already pointed out, so it should be more like a flow than a flood.

There will be software ready before launch, we are not saying it will be perfect and polished (for example touch screen support in everything is unlikely), but it will work, most of it will be your favorite GP2X stuff.

cool, the shipping date is stated november 30th - are the units starting shipping from that date or will all be shipped by that date? just a little confused here.

 

[Squidge]

cool, the shipping date is stated november 30th - are the units starting shipping from that date or will all be shipped by that date? just a little confused here.

I don't think that can be answered. I believe the 30th is just an estimation. If things happen sooner than expected, you may receive before that date, and if theres some holdup, it could be a week or a month afterwards.