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Oyster outage
"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. -- Roland Perry |
Oyster outage
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. I notice that the handwritten sign says that contactless cards should be used as normal, so the fault was specifically with the Oyster system. Apart from the change of year, there was also the normal New Year's free travel -- I wonder if the attempt to re-set to normal chargeable travel failed? |
Oyster outage
In message
-sept ember.org, at 09:38:40 on Sat, 2 Jan 2016, Recliner remarked: 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. I notice that the handwritten sign says that contactless cards should be used as normal, so the fault was specifically with the Oyster system. Apart from the change of year, there was also the normal New Year's free travel -- I wonder if the attempt to re-set to normal chargeable travel failed? 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. -- Roland Perry |
Oyster outage
Recliner wrote:
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-thousan ds- 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. I notice that the handwritten sign says that contactless cards should be used as normal, so the fault was specifically with the Oyster system. Apart from the change of year, there was also the normal New Year's free travel -- I wonder if the attempt to re-set to normal chargeable travel failed? 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. Peter Smyth |
Oyster outage
Roland Perry wrote on 02 Jan 2016 at 09:50 ...
In message -sept ember.org, at 09:38:40 on Sat, 2 Jan 2016, Recliner remarked: 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. I notice that the handwritten sign says that contactless cards should be used as normal, so the fault was specifically with the Oyster system. Apart from the change of year, there was also the normal New Year's free travel -- I wonder if the attempt to re-set to normal chargeable travel failed? 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? -- Richard J. (to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address) |
Oyster outage
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, and secondly the other routine issues you mention ought to be well understood and planned for during a holiday period. 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. -- Roland Perry |
Oyster outage
On Sat, 2 Jan 2016 11:00:45 -0000 (UTC), "Peter Smyth"
wrote: Recliner wrote: 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-thousan ds- 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. I notice that the handwritten sign says that contactless cards should be used as normal, so the fault was specifically with the Oyster system. Apart from the change of year, there was also the normal New Year's free travel -- I wonder if the attempt to re-set to normal chargeable travel failed? 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. |
Oyster outage
In message , at 11:00:45 on Sat, 2 Jan 2016,
Peter Smyth remarked: The free travel ended at 0430 1st Jan and there weren't any reports of problems yesterday. That's a good point. I was expecting the free travel to have been all day on the 1st. -- Roland Perry |
Oyster outage
"Roland Perry" wrote in message ... 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, and secondly the other routine issues you mention ought to be well understood and planned for during a holiday period. 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 tim |
Oyster outage
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. -- Roland Perry |
Oyster outage
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 |
Oyster outage
"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 |
Oyster outage
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 |
Oyster outage
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? |
Oyster outage
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 |
Oyster outage
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. |
Oyster outage
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? |
Oyster outage
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) |
Oyster outage
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 |
Oyster outage
On Saturday, 2 January 2016 17:00:55 UTC, Clive Page wrote:
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? Lack of knowledge? My friend left for work at 0615 this morning, and said the gates were closed at Wood Green, so she touched in as normal (but a '1' flashed up on the display rather than her balance). |
Oyster outage
In message , at 16:58:52 on Sat, 2 Jan
2016, Richard J. remarked: 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? The Nottingham City Transport smartcard issue in around 2006. But what is special about 1/1/2016 compared to 1/1/2015, 1/1/2014, etc? Or 1/1/2006 compared to 1/1/2000. There's something about the range of years for which 1/1/xxxx is recognised, which transcends xxxx=2000. -- Roland Perry |
Oyster outage
In message , at 17:00:46 on Sat, 2 Jan
2016, Clive Page remarked: 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? I think that's called "not understanding the exact nature of the outage and not wanting to be caught deliberately evading fares, even if for a short time TfL will decide not to worry about it". -- Roland Perry |
Oyster outage
In message , at 16:19:53 on Sat, 2 Jan 2016,
" remarked: It wouldn't surprise me if they are looking at introducing this in Netherlands as the whole country is zoned. The Dutch railway system over the whole country is about the same size in terms of number of stations and permutations of routes as TfL is in just London. Try Zoning the non-TfL bits of the UK and there will be so many winners and losers you'd never hear the end of it. -- Roland Perry |
Oyster outage
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 17:00:46 on Sat, 2 Jan 2016, Clive Page remarked: 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? I think that's called "not understanding the exact nature of the outage and not wanting to be caught deliberately evading fares, even if for a short time TfL will decide not to worry about it". There is also the crazy notion of "honesty" and "believing in paying for a service because it's the right thing to do", which is not in fact entirely lost to the world... (Back in the day when I travelled regularly between unstaffed stations with PERTIS machines, I actually used to pay my fare in full, or seek out the guard if I didn't have enough change. Strange but true.) |
Oyster outage
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Oyster outage
On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 17:32:16 +0000
Paul Corfield wrote: I haven't seen the precise detail of why downloads seemingly failed but I am not as deeply sceptical as some on here about the table testing process. All the "oh they can't have tested it properly" comments are unlikely to be true. There were / are very well Well they quite evidently didn't test for some condition otherwise the failure wouldn't have occured. This is simple. Oyster cards hold value on the card and are read, processed and then written back to with an updated balance and journey history. In order to work out a PAYG fare or extension fare then you I'd love to know how many hacked Oysters or DIY cards are out there that can be loaded with a random value and/or don't decrement the value. -- Spud |
Oyster outage
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Oyster outage
On Mon, 4 Jan 2016 10:15:37 +0000
Someone Somewhere wrote: On 04/01/2016 09:48, d wrote: On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 17:32:16 +0000 Paul Corfield wrote: This is simple. Oyster cards hold value on the card and are read, processed and then written back to with an updated balance and journey history. In order to work out a PAYG fare or extension fare then you I'd love to know how many hacked Oysters or DIY cards are out there that can be loaded with a random value and/or don't decrement the value. -- Spud Presumably the "read" part of the above has some form of linked reconciliation which quickly identifies and blocks those cards? Not when the original MiFare was hacked they didn't. Anyway, if its DIY card they could easily program in a rolling Id number. I doubt if the gates keep a list of every single valid card thats been issued, probably just blocked ones if anything. Presumably the version 1 cards are still valid so that hack could still be used. Which probably means it is. -- Spud |
Oyster outage
In uk.transport.london message , Sat, 2
Jan 2016 16:58:52, Richard J. posted: 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? It is the first year 20xx for which xx cannot be stored in four bits. If memory space was limited in a system designed a decade ago, someone might have chosen to use just four bits for the variable part of the year, thinking "Well, I'll not be in this job in 2016, ha ha!". -- (c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. Turnpike v6.05 MIME. Merlyn Web Site - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links. |
Oyster outage
Dr J R Stockton wrote:
In uk.transport.london message , Sat, 2 Jan 2016 16:58:52, Richard J. posted: 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? It is the first year 20xx for which xx cannot be stored in four bits. If memory space was limited in a system designed a decade ago, someone might have chosen to use just four bits for the variable part of the year, thinking "Well, I'll not be in this job in 2016, ha ha!". Well, as we soon learned, the problem wasn't any sort of Y2K issue. But in any case, Y2K type bugs date from software designed 40 or more years ago, when every byte mattered; Oyster is far too recent for the designers to have been trying to save microscopic amounts of memory. |
Oyster outage
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Oyster outage
In message
-sept ember.org, at 23:52:54 on Mon, 4 Jan 2016, Recliner remarked: 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? It is the first year 20xx for which xx cannot be stored in four bits. If memory space was limited in a system designed a decade ago, someone might have chosen to use just four bits for the variable part of the year, thinking "Well, I'll not be in this job in 2016, ha ha!". Well, as we soon learned, the problem wasn't any sort of Y2K issue. But in any case, Y2K type bugs date from software designed 40 or more years ago, Nope, plenty of things which actually failed were much more recent than that. when every byte mattered; Oyster is far too recent for the designers to have been trying to save microscopic amounts of memory. That doesn't explain why the NCT Smartcards broke on 1/1/2006. -- Roland Perry |
Oyster outage
On 03/01/2016 17:32, Paul Corfield wrote:
Paul, thanks for your explanation. Well far too many people were getting ridiculously excited about "free travel" - it was all over Twitter. By the time the excitement reached fever pitch the fault had been fixed. I wonder how they brought the system back up - I assumed that there would have been quite a number travelling using Oyster who didn't have their card read on entry who would have been expected to touch out after the system came back up, thereby getting an unresolved journey and a hefty penalty. I haven't heard any howls of protest about that occurring so maybe it didn't. Or maybe lots of people get unresolved journeys so often and are rich enough that they simply don't care? -- Clive Page |
Oyster outage
On Tue, 5 Jan 2016 09:54:33 +0000
Clive Page wrote: On 03/01/2016 17:32, Paul Corfield wrote: Paul, thanks for your explanation. Well far too many people were getting ridiculously excited about "free travel" - it was all over Twitter. By the time the excitement reached fever pitch the fault had been fixed. I wonder how they brought the system back up - I assumed that there would have been quite a number travelling using Oyster who didn't have their card read on entry who would have been expected to touch out after the system came back up, thereby getting an unresolved journey and a hefty penalty. I haven't heard any howls of protest about that occurring so maybe it didn't. Or maybe lots of people get unresolved journeys so often and are rich enough that they simply don't care? Apparently they'll get a refund. Whether it'll happen or not is anyones guess. If it had been me I'd have just gone to the guy at the gate and explained the situation and refuse to touch out. -- Spud |
Oyster outage
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Oyster outage
On Tue, 5 Jan 2016 11:21:09 +0000 (UTC)
Peter CS wrote: Dr J R Stockton wrote in news:d6s+ : In uk.transport.london message , Sat, 2 Jan 2016 16:58:52, Richard J. posted: 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? It is the first year 20xx for which xx cannot be stored in four bits. If memory space was limited in a system designed a decade ago, someone might have chosen to use just four bits for the variable part of the year, thinking "Well, I'll not be in this job in 2016, ha ha!". The certainly was a time when saving 4 bits in a date would be worthwhile, but by 1999 we'd got beyond that, I hope. In a back end system certainly. In a smartcard with perhaps only a few KB of RAM possibly not. -- Spud |
Oyster outage
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Oyster outage
On 02/01/2016 11:44, Roland Perry wrote: In message , at 11:00:45 on Sat, 2 Jan 2016, Peter Smyth remarked: The free travel ended at 0430 1st Jan and there weren't any reports of problems yesterday. That's a good point. I was expecting the free travel to have been all day on the 1st. Why? It's been 2345 NYE to 0430 NYD for years and years and years. |
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