Connection issue

Yeah, it clearly wasn't browser or simulator related then, since the race simulation was running just fine (which is why everyone could see it in timing). It may well have been related to the fact that 20% of the service was using some updates today which are being trialled before a complete rollout. That's the only thing which was different today that could be related. Other than these posts though, we have no indicators. That makes it a strange one.

Sometimes things resolve themselves before you can get to the bottom of what happened. If it was a simulator issue, we'd be in a much better position to debug it (that's on our side - the servers) but when it's a viewer-related issue that's client side (on your computers) which means the only way to properly debug that is to be there on your computer when it is happening and catch as much information as possible.

FYI I do think I know what it was, with an educated guess at exactly what would have produced this set of circumstances. Having a good description of what happened is enough to narrow it down to 2 or 3 potential culprits. The things that could have caused this are not something which would continue happening in to any future races.

Hi Mark, sorry to hear that and thanks for letting us know. People were reporting the same thing a few days ago and it was unclear exactly what the cause was at the time. Thanks to your post, now we know for certain.

We were running a newer version of the service with several improvements on 20% of the races in the system a few days ago, which seemed the most likely culprit. So, we took that away, and in the day between nobody complained of the issue. I re-enabled this newer version of the service on 20% of the races just an hour or two ago, and your race is running in it. Now you have reported the issue it's absolutely clear where it is stemming from.

However... there is not a single error message being thrown and I can connect just fine, as can many others. I can see others in the race right now. We have temporarily removed the newer service again and will conduct an investigation in to why this is happening to some people. The remainder of your race will run on this newer service, but from tomorrow it will run on the older version again while we investigate this.

Can we contact you for testing if we need to? It would be good to get to bottom of this with someone that is experiencing it.

Also, I can postpone this race if you would like, so it can be re-run in the next calendar slot.

Edit: Could you produce a Java log and put it on pastebin.com and send it to me via PM? That may reveal why you are unable to connect.

Earlier today, we got to the bottom of what this connection issue was and it has been resolved. We have restored the new improved service to 20% of the platform, and it is currently running well and everyone has connected just fine.

What's "improved" about this new improved service? I hear you ask. Well, whenever there is a service glitch and a race goes down (e.g. the infamous "Connection problem" message) the race progress will be restored when it comes back online, in other words it will continue where it left off. It will not restart, as has been the case in the past.

I'll be writing a blog about this and some other things shortly, but you heard it here first. Tonight, 80% of the service is still using the old platform and will not have the same protection, only 20% is using the new service. If the trial of the new improved service runs well this time (tonight) then we'll roll it out across the entire platform tomorrow.