free agent access

la Jolla · Post by **la Jolla** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 1:40 pm

Don't worry about it Greg, I was hoping to have STATS hold off on processing the bids until it was fixed and I could bid myself, but no choice no problem at this point......nydownunder, why even post at this point if you were able to secure your free agents. I wouldn't be wasting my Sunday night posting here if I didn't experience problems with the bidding. I'm not an idiot, I know the difference between a slow loading page and a site not functioning at this point. If it didn't affect you then don't try telling Greg what happened to others.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 1:47 pm

Originally posted by la Jolla:

Don't worry about it Greg, I was hoping to have STATS hold off on processing the bids until it was fixed and I could bid myself, but no choice no problem at this point......nydownunder, why even post at this point if you were able to secure your free agents. I wouldn't be wasting my Sunday night posting here if I didn't experience problems with the bidding. I'm not an idiot, I know the difference between a slow loading page and a site not functioning at this point. If it didn't affect you then don't try telling Greg what happened to others. That's exactly what I was trying to accomplish Chris as well. Fireballs and KOQ contacted me while I was at Subway with the kids at 6:05 p.m. CST and I immediately fired off an e-mail to STATS to NOT announce the bids. I was seeking an additional hour myself and then I'd come on the boards to explain what was going on. But it appears to be on autopilot tonight and thus we didn't get the request fulfilled. I feel terrible about what happened, but the facts are the facts and once the winning bids were announced there was no turning back.

Again, I'm sorry Chris for what happened as you have every right to place your bids during the last hour after a busy week. We haven't had this problem before at the deadline and I hope it doesn't happen again. But once I get an answer to what happened I'll post it here. Everyone needs to know exactly when the problems occurred and why they continued.

nydownunder · Post by **nydownunder** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 1:54 pm

Originally posted by la Jolla:

Don't worry about it Greg, I was hoping to have STATS hold off on processing the bids until it was fixed and I could bid myself, but no choice no problem at this point......nydownunder, why even post at this point if you were able to secure your free agents. I wouldn't be wasting my Sunday night posting here if I didn't experience problems with the bidding. I'm not an idiot, I know the difference between a slow loading page and a site not functioning at this point. If it didn't affect you then don't try telling Greg what happened to others. ...in order that Greg gets an objective opinion.

Walla Walla · Post by **Walla Walla** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 2:33 pm

Not extending the draft one hour was the right call. I'm recalling first year history of the NFBC. I'm in a AL auction team. I and another owner wanted the same player. There was no two hour cut off of free agents at that time. The player wasn't added and the FAAB time was extended one hour. I got my bid in but the other owner had already decided there would be no more updates and signed off. Later the ruling was that I would lose the player back to FAAB and he could be bid on again the next week. Believe me I was pissed. But Greg decided to stick to the rules.

I've been backever since. Some times the rules help and sometimes they suck. But you have to have rules. The point is if Greg had extended the deadline this could've become bad for everyone.

eddiejag · Post by **eddiejag** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 3:39 pm

IVE been yelling at my kid's all day,see they were on earlier and i thought someone did some downloading, everybody pleaded inocent .

I guess they were right.

I do most of my bids earlier but forgot a couple guys and like some it went slow but got most of them, could have been much worse for myself.

Hope this works out, good luck.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 1:58 am

I wish I had a better answer for everyone this morning, but STATS tells me they did not notice any problems on the site yesterday and their logs do not show any technical problems. Obviously enough people said the system was faulty yesterday afternoon and slow, so I trust there were problems. STATS' e-mail system was also down yesterday afternoon, so they received my e-mails at 6:00 by 10:00 and responded then.

Again, I apologize for the system being slow and down at times yesterday and I'll see if the guys at STATS can look into this a little further. If their e-mail was four hours behind, it's possible other systems were slow yesterday too and they just didn't realize it. They do have technical guys working each Sunday during FAAB, but yesterday was the perfect bad storm apparently as nobody there noticed any problems and our cries for help went unheard because their e-mail was delayed.

We'll be extra careful this Sunday and hope this is the end of the glitches to the system. Sorry folks.

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 2:35 am

I'm just a lowly water delivery boy, but here's my take...

Obviously there was a problem yesterday afternoon accessing and bidding on free agents. The only possible causes...

1) End-user problem

2) Entire Internet down/sluggish

3) STATS site problem

I don't see how #1 and #2 are possible. Many users with different ISPs and geographical locations were affected. Also, I was surfing other websites without any difficulties.

That leaves us with #3. It's a little unsettling that STATS systems say everything was working fine (even though we know it wasn't). My guess is that STATS had something going on around 6-7pm last night. Hardware crash/upgrade comes to mind. It's also suspicious when we hear that their email was four hours behind.

Hopefully this was a one time glitch, but the lesson learned from an end-users prospective is that you should input bids as early as possible and then update as needed.

Jackstraw · Post by **Jackstraw** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 2:37 am

Seems to me that most of the people on this thread don't think that this is a very big issue. I find it tremendous... The one week of the year that I am running late on getting my FAAB in and KA-POW(nydownunder, a lot of us do realize that this is a big stakes event and attempt to act likewise, sometimes it just doesn't work out that way though). I guess I can use Randy Johnson to fill in a spot this week.

Everyone can say whatever they want about you should have done it earlier, but it doesn't change the fact that according to the rules we are supposed to be allowed until 7:00 EST to get our bids in, not the 6:00 that the system seemed to go unresponsive.

Oh well, I guess I will file this in the pile of "oh well's."

Chest Rockwell · Post by **Chest Rockwell** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 2:53 am

To make any suggestion that someone who waited until the last minute got what they deserved is just silly.

This week with the trade deadline more than any other dictated last minute bids or more importantly the potential of a last minute bid.

Give him hell Oakchunas!

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 2:59 am

Originally posted by Chest Rockwell:

To make any suggestion that someone who waited until the last minute got what they deserved is just silly.

Who is suggesting that??? No one deserved it.

But, one has to be aware that there are potential problems to submitting bids at the end of the timeframe.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 3:07 am

Originally posted by Gordon Gekko:

I'm just a lowly water delivery boy, but here's my take...

Obviously there was a problem yesterday afternoon accessing and bidding on free agents. The only possible causes...

1) End-user problem

2) Entire Internet down/sluggish

3) STATS site problem

I don't see how #1 and #2 are possible. Many users with different ISPs and geographical locations were affected. Also, I was surfing other websites without any difficulties.

That leaves us with #3. It's a little unsettling that STATS systems say everything was working fine (even though we know it wasn't). My guess is that STATS had something going on around 6-7pm last night. Hardware crash/upgrade comes to mind. It's also suspicious when we hear that their email was four hours behind.

Hopefully this was a one time glitch, but the lesson learned from an end-users prospective is that you should input bids as early as possible and then update as needed. Trust me, I believe SOMETHING was wrong yesterday. There are enough people on the Message Boards who are saying they had troubles yesterday afternoon, especially between 6:30 and 7 p.m. EST, so I believe them. Again, I just got off the phone with STATS and they don't see any system issues that occurred. I'm also told that they didn't have e-mail problems, but I know we did, so somehow our e-mail took four hours to get there. I don't know what to think now, I'm just disappointed that the system didn't work perfectly and that some owners were affected to some degree. And no owner should be blamed for waiting until the last minute to make a free agent move as the system should work fine all the time. That's what we all pay for.

SOMETHING happened and we'll continue to look into it, but right now I don't have any good answers as to why the problems occurred. Sorry again.

KJ Duke · Post by **KJ Duke** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 4:32 am

The system was processing very, very slowly for hours, though still seemed to be functioning. As the deadline approached it got slower and slower (all other internet sites I accessed were loading/functioning normally at the same time).

I missed getting bids in for a couple of my leagues because of it. Also, in one of the leagues, I think the NL auction, a few minutes before the deadline all players appeared on the FA list ... I was kinda shocked when I logged in there and saw Saito at the top of the FA pitchers list thinking someone dropped him, then saw a bunch of other closers behind him along with Zambrano - then I knew something was really out of whack.

[ July 30, 2007, 10:35 AM: Message edited by: KJ Duke ]

Quahogs · Post by **Quahogs** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 5:18 am

Fantasy baseball - welcome to the 21st century.

A "denial-of-service" attack is characterized by an explicit attempt by attackers to prevent legitimate users of a service from using that service. Examples include

* attempts to "flood" a network, thereby preventing legitimate network traffic

* attempts to disrupt connections between two machines, thereby preventing access to a service

* attempts to prevent a particular individual from accessing a service

* attempts to disrupt service to a specific system or person

1) STATS is reporting that it did not see any software or hardware problems occurring on sunday.

2) the site was operating without problems until

6pm or so. Then it was still operational but slowed to an absolute crawl. Even with a high end pc and speedy broadband just editing one $ amt took a minute.

coincidence or something for STATS to be on the lookout for ?

...hey, I have a Michael Bourn Identity thing going on, what do you want

Q

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 5:28 am

Q - I agree with what you said, but why would attackers be targeting STATS???? Don't they have bigger companies in their crosshairs?

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 5:39 am

A "DOS" is something stats should be able to check for immediately by looking at their ip logs.

I'll go with the old, "left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing". Someone from stats was doing an upgrade of the system and didn't know that their production databases were need on a sunday night. Any other ideas?

Quahogs · Post by **Quahogs** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 5:39 am

Originally posted by Gordon Gekko:

Q - I agree with what you said, but why would attackers be targeting STATS???? Don't they have bigger companies in their crosshairs? does every attacker have to be some high school kid ? Listen, I have no idea what it takes nor what preventive measures a company takes to counter something like that. Any DOS that I know of hit the major online co's a couple years back - and just for kicks. Im sure amazon and others have measures in place. Does STATS ? I don't know. You want an edge as a contestant ?? Launch a sucker like this at 6pm.

Q

Berkshire Juggernauts · Post by **Berkshire Juggernauts** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 6:39 am

I think I found the problem!! STATS could not handle The Juggernauts pitching stats and it overloaded there system. You see things were fine until, Jennings 2/3 IP 11 ER , Livan 4 IP 8 ER and Washburn 5 IP 3 ER. Sorry guys for jamming the system but look on the bright side I may have just eliminated us from overall contention

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 6:59 am

Berk: WOW, I didn't even realize that. There's still plenty of time to make that up. Keep fighting!!!

JohnZ · Post by **JohnZ** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 7:31 am

Originally posted by Gordon Gekko:

Q - I agree with what you said, but why would attackers be targeting STATS???? Don't they have bigger companies in their crosshairs? Hi GG, the net is a strange place.

I'd bet that they didn't even know it was Stats Inc.

They find something to exploit and jump on it with no rhyme or reason. Logic doesn't apply.

I was on at that time, but just watching live stats and it updated fine as I watched a few games on MLB package.

Another option here, but doesn't look like the case, but could be is that there could have been routing problems on the backbone in the Chicago area at that time.

This could explain why it was slow all over the country as no one could get to the CHI area main backbone to the net.

It also explains why Stats had no data or problems on their end.

To find out EXACTLY where the problem is, go to your C: prompt.

Type in:

tracert www.stats.com

If NOTHING returns, then the problem is LOCAL to you.

You'll actually see a list of cities and the hubs you need to pass through to get to Stats Inc.

For me, it might be LA, DEN, CHI...

Now if the information STOPS coming through and DEN is listed as the last hub, the problem is neither on your end or stats end, but a routing problem in DEN.

Now if it gets all the way to CHI and Stats, then most likely the problem is with Stats at that time.

Hope all of this helps.

Berkshire Juggernauts · Post by **Berkshire Juggernauts** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 8:38 am

Thanks Gekko, and keep up the good work with your sqad

KJ Duke · Post by **KJ Duke** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 8:40 am

Originally posted by UFS:

quote:Originally posted by Gordon Gekko:

Q - I agree with what you said, but why would attackers be targeting STATS???? Don't they have bigger companies in their crosshairs? Hi GG, the net is a strange place.

I'd bet that they didn't even know it was Stats Inc.

They find something to exploit and jump on it with no rhyme or reason. Logic doesn't apply.

I was on at that time, but just watching live stats and it updated fine as I watched a few games on MLB package.

Another option here, but doesn't look like the case, but could be is that there could have been routing problems on the backbone in the Chicago area at that time.

This could explain why it was slow all over the country as no one could get to the CHI area main backbone to the net.

It also explains why Stats had no data or problems on their end.

To find out EXACTLY where the problem is, go to your C: prompt.

Type in:

tracert www.stats.com

If NOTHING returns, then the problem is LOCAL to you.

You'll actually see a list of cities and the hubs you need to pass through to get to Stats Inc.

For me, it might be LA, DEN, CHI...

Now if the information STOPS coming through and DEN is listed as the last hub, the problem is neither on your end or stats end, but a routing problem in DEN.

Now if it gets all the way to CHI and Stats, then most likely the problem is with Stats at that time.

Hope all of this helps. [/QUOTE]John, how would this explain all the non-free agent players jumping into the FA pool for a few minutes? Seems like there HAD to be something going with STATS themselves. Maybe some internal screwup they don't want to talk about?

[ July 30, 2007, 02:41 PM: Message edited by: KJ Duke ]

Less than Dave · Post by **Less than Dave** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 8:52 am

I got screwed... I only was able to make 2 bids out of the 8 I wanted to make... it took an hour just to get that done! Pages loaded at the speed of a retarded sloth...

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 9:18 am

Originally posted by KJ Duke:

John, how would this explain all the non-free agent players jumping into the FA pool for a few minutes? Seems like there HAD to be something going with STATS themselves. Maybe some internal screwup they don't want to talk about? Good point duke. I didn't see the faab snafu, but others said it happened. I don't see how that could have been caused by a "backbone" issue or "DOS" attack.

JohnZ · Post by **JohnZ** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 11:23 am

Originally posted by Gordon Gekko:

quote:Originally posted by KJ Duke:

John, how would this explain all the non-free agent players jumping into the FA pool for a few minutes? Seems like there HAD to be something going with STATS themselves. Maybe some internal screwup they don't want to talk about? Good point duke. I didn't see the faab snafu, but others said it happened. I don't see how that could have been caused by a "backbone" issue or "DOS" attack. [/QUOTE]Not sure how to explain that one.... but an attack could be problematic on the software and/or your browser.

One of my main programmers is a head IT guy at Verio in charge of these types of things, and all I can say is that it's a bizarre world out there as to why these things happen. 95% of the time, logic and some reasonable explanation doesn't apply.

I pay $400/mo to make sure these things don't happen to me. Pretty steep if you ask me, but so far, worth it.

Spyhunter · Post by **Spyhunter** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 11:41 am

GREG,

I want to make sure that it is noted that there were 2 problems yesterday. Everyone is commenting on the slowness/non-responsiveness, which also affected me.

However, there was a 2nd major problem, which I saw only mentioned very briefly:

ALL players were listed for free agent availability in the 6-7pm timeframe. A-Rod, everyone.

To me, this indicates that STATS had something going on. It is unlikely that a Denial of Service attack would change the free agent list. Also, the page slowness wasn't consistent across STATS, again, another indication that someone at Stats was doing something.

Greg, glad to see you on this. As you want to grow the NFBC to include the Online championship, as the number of players increase, the overall $ increase, etc... all of this makes the service level from STATS even more important as I am sure you know.

Spy

P.S. as for those who say you should have your bids on - pshaw. The reality is that player changes in role (like walker getting a save last sunday) can happen at any time. Or a player you want to bid on may get hurt. The system must be available and ready to enter bids up to exactly 7pm.