On Sat, 2 Jan 2016 12:50:45 +0000
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 12:33:58 on Sat, 2 Jan 2016,
tim..... remarked:

Plus the fact they are having to talk to their suppliers to work out
a fix, rather than applying a clue-bat to the sysadmin-du-jour.

ISTR that the "contracted out" admin and the suppliers are the same people

The admin are son-of-EDS and the suppliers Cubic, I thought.

Probably with half the development and support staff based in Bombangaloristan
to save a few quid. You pays your money....

--
Spud

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 12:33:58 on Sat, 2 Jan 2016,
tim..... remarked:

Plus the fact they are having to talk to their suppliers to work out a
fix, rather than applying a clue-bat to the sysadmin-du-jour.

ISTR that the "contracted out" admin and the suppliers are the same people

The admin are son-of-EDS

Oh, who are "son of EDS" (I need to keep track of them as they own me a
pension from 4 mergers ago)

tim

In message , at 14:06:54 on Sat, 2 Jan 2016,
tim..... remarked:

The admin are son-of-EDS

Oh, who are "son of EDS" (I need to keep track of them as they own me a
pension from 4 mergers ago)

HP Enterprise Services. In Plano, Texas [1], which gives another clue to
its parentage.

[1] Also home of the Ewings. I've been to the ranch, that's the real one
not the film-set in California.
--
Roland Perry

On 02.01.16 9:30, Roland Perry wrote:
"Thousands of rail, bus and Tube passengers enjoyed free
transport on Saturday after London’s Oyster card network
collapsed.

Barriers are rail and tube stations were opened by staff after
Oyster card 'reader' machines used to register the start and end
of each journey failed to work throughout the network."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-
transport/12077955/Londons-Oyster-card-system-crashes-giving-thousands-
free-travel.html

I wonder if this is a random fault, or a "Y2K" type of problem.

I remember when the Nottingham City Transport smartcard had one of the
latter at New Year in around 2006.


What time did this occur? I used the tube yesterday without any
difficulties, though I was using contactless.

What are the stats, BTW, on contactless replacing Oyster?

In message , at 14:59:06 on Sat, 2 Jan 2016,
" remarked:

What time did this occur? I used the tube yesterday without any
difficulties, though I was using contactless.

Contactless was unaffected.

What are the stats, BTW, on contactless replacing Oyster?

Dunno; it would be good to get some numbers.

I assume this applies mainly to PAYG - I don't think you can load a
Travelcard Season onto a contactless CC.
--
Roland Perry

wrote:
On 02.01.16 9:30, Roland Perry wrote:
"Thousands of rail, bus and Tube passengers enjoyed free
transport on Saturday after London’s Oyster card network
collapsed.

Barriers are rail and tube stations were opened by staff after
Oyster card 'reader' machines used to register the start and end
of each journey failed to work throughout the network."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-
transport/12077955/Londons-Oyster-card-system-crashes-giving-thousands-
free-travel.html

I wonder if this is a random fault, or a "Y2K" type of problem.

I remember when the Nottingham City Transport smartcard had one of the
latter at New Year in around 2006.


What time did this occur? I used the tube yesterday without any
difficulties, though I was using contactless.

It happened this morning when they tried and failed to download the new
fares tables to the gates. It only affected Oyster, not contactless (as the
fares calculations are done in the back office with contactless).


What are the stats, BTW, on contactless replacing Oyster?

Dunno, but they'd be interesting.

On 02.01.16 15:32, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 14:59:06 on Sat, 2 Jan 2016,
" remarked:

What time did this occur? I used the tube yesterday without any
difficulties, though I was using contactless.

Contactless was unaffected.

What are the stats, BTW, on contactless replacing Oyster?

Dunno; it would be good to get some numbers.

I assume this applies mainly to PAYG - I don't think you can load a
Travelcard Season onto a contactless CC.

You cannot load a Travelcard Season on contactless, though TfL does at
least apply daily and weekly caps on them AIUI.

Takes away the point of going to the machines.

It wouldn't surprise me if they are looking at introducing this in
Netherlands as the whole country is zoned.

It's just occurred to me that the free fares on New Year's Eve aren't solely a case of TfL (or their sponsors') benevolence, but more to do with the difficulty of correctly charging for journeys which span the 'start of ticketing day' at 0430.

https://nighttube.london/customer-information/ says that the ticketing system wasn't previously capable of this, but Cubic have recently updated the backend so that it can cope when (if?) night tube eventually starts.

I wonder if it's coincidence that free travel on New Year's Eve began on 31/12/03 - the first year that Oyster cards were available?

Roland Perry wrote on 02 Jan 2016 at 11:32 ...
In message , at 11:12:16 on Sat, 2 Jan
2016, Richard J. remarked:
The free travel thing points even more to a Y2K style problem, if the
charging system wasn't active yesterday. In the Nottingham case it
wasn't spotted until the 2nd because no buses ran on the 1st.

ps I note some NatWest debit cards had outages on the 1st: another Y2K
problem perhaps.

For decades, computer systems have exhibited faults after a holiday
period, caused often by problems in restarting hardware or software
after a holiday outage or reverting to normal operation after
non-standard holiday operation, or caused by changes to the system that
were applied during the holiday. Why are you assuming that this
particular instance was in any way similar to Y2K?

Firstly, because a very similar incident *was* tracked down to that
cause,

You mean there was a very similar incident 16 years ago? But what is
special about 1/1/2016 compared to 1/1/2015, 1/1/2014, etc?

and secondly the other routine issues you mention ought to be
well understood and planned for during a holiday period.

In theory, yes, but in practice there is always a greater risk of a
problem following a period of non-standard operations. This is
especially so if you're doing a major update of fare tables across the
network, which might be "routine" in the sense that you do it every
year, but is still a more obvious likely cause than some previously
unknown fundamental problem connected with 1/1/2016.

Plus the fact they are having to talk to their suppliers to work out a
fix, rather than applying a clue-bat to the sysadmin-du-jour.

Quite normal if there's a major system outage. It doesn't tell you
anything about the cause.
--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)

On 02/01/2016 11:36, Recliner wrote:
On Sat, 2 Jan 2016 11:00:45 -0000 (UTC), "Peter Smyth"

The free travel ended at 0430 1st Jan and there weren't any reports of
problems yesterday. I'm guessing it is relating to the annual fares
increase which takes effect today, there was probably some sort of
update being pushed out to the gates overnight which has failed.

Yes, that appears to have been the problem.

If so, why would they be able to accept contact-less cards while Oyster
was u/s? Don't the same fares get charged either way?

Any why, if all you had to do to get a free trip was to claim to have an
Oyster card, would anyone during the outage try to use a contact-less card?


--
Clive Page