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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI am very upset and angry that the smart people didn't prepare for the Internet logjam
that signing up for health insurance would cause.
It is inexcusable because it gives the anti-Obamacare naysayers one more talking point..
The administration had 3 years to prepare for Oct. 1st - they had 3 years to figure out how to allow for huge numbers to sign up and didn't...
Oh brother.
I guess my rant is because I am depressed. Depressed because I am having a hard time processing how much hate there really is in this country.
I just feel like we need something big -one thing -any thing ...that can stand as good news.
Glad you posted this. I feel the same way. have not slept well since Monday.
Justice
(7,188 posts)Ninga
(8,275 posts)that millions of anxious folks would want to sign up on day one.
Whisp
(24,096 posts)on release.
After all it's been years that Obamacare has been spouted as the worst thing next to Armageddon and the media sure didn't help straighten that out - as Fuck Chodd said it's 'not my job' to challenge Republican lies...
or it's like the Diablo 3 release - great expectations make for not so great server performance
sendero
(28,552 posts).. let me tell you that it would not be as easy as you probably think. Some real web-server experts probably could chime in and explain better, but the gist of the story is this.
Given enough traffic, is approaches being impossible to handle it all. You can add more servers and routers and hardware in general, but not every aspect of the implementation is completely scalable, meaning that at some point just adding equipment doesn't add that much capacity.
And if you did, you'd spend millions of dollars for equipment that would only be needed for the initial crush.
Ninga
(8,275 posts)I do not dispute your knowledge - but somehow I just cannot picture the brain trust sitting around the table talking about the hot mess signing up would cause so give folks 180 days...
I can't imagine the 'brain trust' people that think that extremely heavy traffic would not mess things up. Do you seriously think that giving people less than 180 days to sign up is brilliant?
I'm wondering if it isn't some haters also throwing a wrench into the works.
sendero
(28,552 posts)... ( and I think they were to be fair ) that the system would not be able to handle the initial inrush and that planning to sign up the day the exchange opened would be an unrealistic goal.
I understand and sympathize with your frustration. I'm thinking that if you can be patient a few days this will wash out and you will have plenty of time to get enrolled in a plan before the deadline.
Ninga
(8,275 posts)It seems to me that folks do not understand (or don't want to understand) how anxious people get when important functions don't work.
sendero
(28,552 posts)... I get it
Myrina
(12,296 posts)Hell, anyone who has seen the lines at the I-store prior to a new release should have expected similar problems with the ACA online exchange.
Violet_Crumble
(35,961 posts)I dunno. Some common sense has to come into play here. You've got 180 days to register or whatever you do. If there's heavy traffic, you go away and try again in a few days when the initial rush has died down. What the person said who explained it to you is correct. I don't have all the technical knowledge, but I have worked doing webby stuff on a site that has a real spike in traffic for a period of time each year. You can bring on more servers to try to cope with the load, you can test it all as much as possible beforehand, but the reality is that any website that gets a massive amount of traffic over a short period of time is going to end up with its servers being overloaded. I'd also question the cost of bringing on a whole lot more servers (which wouldn't do much to drastically help with the load) for a short period of time, knowing that the peak period will be over in a few days or a week and that spike will probably never happen again.
So my non-technical input is the surefire way to ensure that you don't encounter problems is to have some patience and try again in a few days...
dkf
(37,305 posts)Can't they contract to Amazon perhaps?
Trekologer
(997 posts)The likely issue is that there is a backend bottleneck that can't be solved simply by throwing more hardware at it. And even if it could, there is a point of diminishing returns. Why spend an extra $10 million plus up front (plus additional recurring costs) simply to handle the opening days' crush?
dkf
(37,305 posts)Trekologer
(997 posts)Specifically some parts of the pages not having data populated in them and saved input not getting saved, I'd guess it was a database/data store. That's one of, if not the, hardest parts to solve. For a database to be useful, you need to be able to read and write data concurrently, sometimes the same data. You can improve some of the reads by caching commonly-read data but you also have to solve issues of updating that data and making sure it is in sync (for something like the healthcare.gov site, you absolutely don't want to be displaying stale data).
A common database in enterprise applications is Oracle. Oracle is a beast in many ways (some good, some bad, some meh). If your Oracle database is properly tuned (something you might not be able to do unless you analyze real traffic for a while) and still run into performance issues, you're likely left to throw more hardware at the problem (buy more servers). A high performance server for an Oracle database can be very, very expensive (we're talking sometimes at least $100,000/unit for the hardware alone, not to mention the software). Consider that you might not need those after a week or so. Does it make sense to buy it?
dkf
(37,305 posts)If they can't even manage a percentage of the uninsured?
Trekologer
(997 posts)First, you aren't going to have thousands of concurrent reads of the same data with digital health records. Second, using techniques such as sharding/federation, the health record data can be distributed where that might not be possible with the signup website. Third, retrieving health records isn't as sensitive as generating a webpage to display signup options/calculation results/etc. Finally, you often cannot predict how your application traffic will look like until you open it to the public. Therefore, it is difficult to know what performance issues will occur until they occur.
dkf
(37,305 posts)TxDemChem
(1,918 posts)but I don't know of any way they could stress test such a large amount of traffic without going live.
While I am curious to see the sites, I will not visit because I have no need yet and I don't want to add any unnecessary traffic. I suspect there may be others who visited the sites anyway AND others with nefarious plans to crash them.
X_Digger
(18,585 posts)That's a quote I often use when some exec suggests throwing more resources at a project to make it go faster.
But it also applies here.
DCBob
(24,689 posts)Im an IT systems guy and IMO its a very poor design.
lamp_shade
(14,834 posts)alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)DonViejo
(60,536 posts)Time for whine and cheese all ready?
HappyMe
(20,277 posts)It isn't as if there is a 24hr time frame to sign up.
We have the ACA as the big good news.
trumad
(41,692 posts)When a site get's slammed all kinds of shit happens.
I fully expected the site to have problems on the first day.
dkf
(37,305 posts)liberal N proud
(60,335 posts)That the first few days and even weeks can be filled with system glitches and slowness. There is not amount of testing that will eliminate this.
In this case, testing could not account for the sheer numbers of people who would hit the site so early in the roll-out. As supporters of the ACA, we should be pleased that so many are swarming to the sites to sign up. This means that all the propaganda against the program is failing. People want health care.
As a systems administrator, my advice is to hang in there, keep trying. You will succeed. Don't let the glitches turn you away from what you deserve.
Ninga
(8,275 posts)MelungeonWoman
(502 posts)Not only do I consider that exceptionally good news in and of itself, I've also found it to be a comforting thought to those who are struggling with signing up.
Jeff In Milwaukee
(13,992 posts)As did EA Games with their Sim City launch.
AND THIS IS THEIR BUSINESS
If the government software was a little glitchy on the roll-out, just chill.
Violet_Crumble
(35,961 posts)What was even worse was after they brought on more servers and I could finally get on, the game was crap, the grids too small to do much, and not nearly as good as Sim City 4, which I've gone back to coz I like playing it on my own and not storing my city on some server...
Hayabusa
(2,135 posts)Everyday, more than 4 million people are logged on to their services, at least half of them actually playing games. During their annual Summer Sale this year, around 10 AM Pacific, when they update their site, the servers were put on such a heavy load that the site crashed.
ScreamingMeemie
(68,918 posts)Jeff In Milwaukee
(13,992 posts)tanyev
(42,559 posts)Sunlei
(22,651 posts)Here's something beautiful to do online in the meantime
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/highlights/
IdaBriggs
(10,559 posts)NPR Interview, October 1, 2013
http://www.npr.org/2013/10/01/227916696/transcript-and-audio-npr-interview-with-president-obama
NPR: Are you prepared for significant glitches as health care exchanges go up for business in the coming days and months?
OBAMA: Absolutely. Absolutely. Keep in mind that the way this is going to work and for everybody who's listening, if you don't have health insurance, if you got family members who don't have health insurance, starting tomorrow you'll be able to go on the website healthcare.gov. It'll direct you to your respective states, where you can look and see exactly what plans are available, how much they cost, whether you're available for subsidies or not, what your bottom line is, and you can choose what's best for you.
But there will be a six-month enrollment period. In the first week, first month, first three months, I would suspect that there will be glitches. This is 50 states, a lot of people signing up for something. And there are going to be problems. And I guarantee you, there will be problems because we've got precedent. When Massachusetts, just one state, set this up, it took quite a long time. It took several months before everything was smoothed out. Of course, the same was true with Medicare and Social Security and every other social program that we've set up, the Children's Health Insurance Program.
But what we're confident about is that people will be able to take a look and find out whether this is something that is going to be good for their families. They don't have to take my word for it. They don't have to take the word of some of these groups that have been running ads saying Obamacare is a disaster. Discount all the political talk, go to the website healthcare.gov directly, and see whether or not this is something that's good for you.
And I am very confident that despite some glitches right, there may be some websites that, you know, crash early; there may be some call centers where it's taking a little bit too long that despite all that, the basic prices that are going to be available to people and the choices that are going to be available to people provide us for the first time the possibility, the prospect that any American out there who does not currently have health insurance can get high-quality health insurance.
That's setting aside all of the consumer protections and benefits that are currently provided by the Affordable Care Act that a lot of people don't know they're getting from, quote-unquote, Obamacare. So if your kid is getting health insurance and staying on your plan until the age of 26, that's because of Obamacare. If if the insurance companies are providing you free preventive care right now on your insurance plan, that's because of Obamacare. If you are getting a rebate because insurance companies weren't spending enough money on care and too much money on administrative costs, that's because of Obamacare. Seniors who are getting discounts on their prescription drugs, they're getting it right now because of what we're doing. And we're certainly not going to repeal benefits that right now a lot of people are enjoying and appreciating, even if they don't know that Obamacare is a the the responsible party for making sure they've got those protections.
ehrnst
(32,640 posts)to spend on preventing this.
Orsino
(37,428 posts)We're lucky that the various web sites have been budgeted at all. If they can eventually handle the traffic, registration can be more or less complete when coverage begins next year.
And voters are being registered, too!
baldguy
(36,649 posts)Sivart
(325 posts)Every online service or website that gets hyped and hyped and hyped and hyped deals with this issue.
You build an infrastructure for your system to accomodate a certain amount of traffic.
Then weeks,. months, years, before launch, you start hyping it up.
You create so much buzz that when launch day comes, its everyone and their mother trying to get on at the same time all day long those first couple of days that causes the issues.
If you are an online gamer, you know exactly what I mean.
Within a few days the buzz dies down and things are fine.
Anyone here try to get onto GTA V online Tuesday? I did. I couldnt get on. No big deal. This is par for the course with over hyped launch dates.
DCBob
(24,689 posts)There are ways to deal with high volume and it doesnt have to cost alot of money. They could have a used replicated servers that would bounce the user to an alternate server once one site is overloaded. Or just simply provide a user with a message "Sorry the site is unavailable.. please try again later." .. instead of just sitting there spinning. Really poor design.
Jeff In Milwaukee
(13,992 posts)That many of the IT people who probably could be creating fixes are....um....furloughed right now.
Myrina
(12,296 posts)See my post/screen grab from yesterday.
After an hour it did redirect me to register but my glitch came when I didn't hit the link to validate my email address 'fast enough' and it kicked me out. The 'fast enough' was < 2 minutes and it was primarily because the link was spinning, deep in thought.
Sissyk
(12,665 posts)However, I think that is part of the reason everyone has three months to complete.
With anything new, you will have those log jams.
I'm helping people in my area get signed up. So far, we have done nothing except get names and personal information together, and set up a time and place to assist them over the next two months.
This is good news, friend! It's just good news that doesn't go into effect until January 1.
I'm sorry you are depressed and hope you feel better soon, Ninga!
bullwinkle428
(20,629 posts)DU has a great staff when it comes to managing technical issues, but there's only so much they can do when there's a ridiculous amount of traffic on the site.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Between the people trying to sign up, the lookiee-lous and the DOS attacks, it's completely unsurprising that the first day was a logjam.
By the end of October, millions will have successfully enrolled.
AlinPA
(15,071 posts)ScreamingMeemie
(68,918 posts)Even though it would be awesome to access, it's not the end of the world.
bigwillq
(72,790 posts)The reason for the "logjam" is because so many people are trying to access the site to get insured.
That is a good thing.
steve2470
(37,457 posts)as well and the NY exchange and the other ones ?
Everyone else said it well, too.