RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts
Whether or not a service provider chooses to deploy redundant services is a decision that is generally made as part of an overall risk-management analysis. Factors such as probability of component failure, business impact and cost are weighed in reaching a decision as to how much money a provider should (and can afford) to invest in redundant service elements. While a systemic power outage is a possibility, it may not be very probable. In fact, there is every likelihood that service elements which would be affected by such a wide outage are not all within Valve's control. We have no information regarding Valve's service infrastructure, but we might assume that it includes fault-tolerant elements (e.g. clustered servers, redundant network paths, etc.) which have been chosen to provide protection from more probable outages (for example, individual hardware failures, network outage of a given carrier). Given the funding resources to do so, most service providers would eagerly embrace geographic redundancy. However, no business has unlimited financial resources and in the end, Valve has to strike a balance between cost and risk, in delivering its services. Valve has an obligation to its investors to make balanced spending decisions and deliver sustainable profitability as much as it needs to deliver reasonable service levels to its customers. As well, the cost of complete redundancy would almost certainly have to be borne in the price of the product. While the end-user impact was certainly real, it is not, after all, an air traffic control system. last night, our servers were full again. I think Valve did a respectable job in restoring services in a timely fashion. No doubt they were extremely motivated to do so. It appeared to me that they followed a prioritized approach, first restoring services critical to supporting game-play. While this simply may have been a sequence imposed by the situation, versus any kind of altruistic service policy, the net effect was the same. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Scott Tuttle Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 4:23 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Such redundancy is Networking 101 and Programming 101... You can choose to ignore it if you like... But in the real word it is fact . Valve is probably making enough money to make it reasonable for them to invest in a redundant system for that money making aparatus. That is Economics 101. You think it looks good to investors that the backbone of the system went down for the entire world because of one geological disaster? You think that's a good selling point for software developers that want to bring their product to market? 273,468 game players couldn't play because Valve had all their eggs in that one geographical basket. Wise business decision? You decide... Ok maybe they are 500 level courses but you still get the point :D -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 2:57 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts All I'm seeing is whining, pettiness, and monday morning quarterbacking. Lets try this. If anyone out there has a diagram of the Valve infrastructure, and a complete understanding of who they contract with for what services and facilities, then lets see it. I only am reading people bitching about what Valve should have done over the last 10 years, and I could do it better, without any reguard or perspective on what the real world impact things may be having in the Seattle area. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts
Very well said Frazer, as always. However, I'm obligated to point out, whatever fault tolerance Valve may or may not have built in... it was insufficient for this event. Until we are informed to the contrary by Valve, we must conclude that they were not geographically redundant... furthermore, to assume they considered a wide-spread power outage in the Northwest not very probable does not bode well for their level of fault tolerance analysis. We needn't wonder if their plan would work, we know it failed. The salient question to be answered now is do they intend to bring their redundancy inline with the need and if not... will their customers accept that position? -Original Message- From: Frazer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 7:43 AM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Whether or not a service provider chooses to deploy redundant services is a decision that is generally made as part of an overall risk-management analysis. Factors such as probability of component failure, business impact and cost are weighed in reaching a decision as to how much money a provider should (and can afford) to invest in redundant service elements. While a systemic power outage is a possibility, it may not be very probable. In fact, there is every likelihood that service elements which would be affected by such a wide outage are not all within Valve's control. We have no information regarding Valve's service infrastructure, but we might assume that it includes fault-tolerant elements (e.g. clustered servers, redundant network paths, etc.) which have been chosen to provide protection from more probable outages (for example, individual hardware failures, network outage of a given carrier). Given the funding resources to do so, most service providers would eagerly embrace geographic redundancy. However, no business has unlimited financial resources and in the end, Valve has to strike a balance between cost and risk, in delivering its services. Valve has an obligation to its investors to make balanced spending decisions and deliver sustainable profitability as much as it needs to deliver reasonable service levels to its customers. As well, the cost of complete redundancy would almost certainly have to be borne in the price of the product. While the end-user impact was certainly real, it is not, after all, an air traffic control system. last night, our servers were full again. I think Valve did a respectable job in restoring services in a timely fashion. No doubt they were extremely motivated to do so. It appeared to me that they followed a prioritized approach, first restoring services critical to supporting game-play. While this simply may have been a sequence imposed by the situation, versus any kind of altruistic service policy, the net effect was the same. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Scott Tuttle Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 4:23 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Such redundancy is Networking 101 and Programming 101... You can choose to ignore it if you like... But in the real word it is fact . Valve is probably making enough money to make it reasonable for them to invest in a redundant system for that money making aparatus. That is Economics 101. You think it looks good to investors that the backbone of the system went down for the entire world because of one geological disaster? You think that's a good selling point for software developers that want to bring their product to market? 273,468 game players couldn't play because Valve had all their eggs in that one geographical basket. Wise business decision? You decide... Ok maybe they are 500 level courses but you still get the point :D -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 2:57 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts All I'm seeing is whining, pettiness, and monday morning quarterbacking. Lets try this. If anyone out there has a diagram of the Valve infrastructure, and a complete understanding of who they contract with for what services and facilities, then lets see it. I only am reading people bitching about what Valve should have done over the last 10 years, and I could do it better, without any reguard or perspective on what the real world impact things may be having in the Seattle area. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts
All of these post on this subject and still NOTHING FROM VALVE!! Any bets on what their gonna do? My moneys on nothing From: Edward Luna [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2006/12/19 Tue AM 07:18:14 CST To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Very well said Frazer, as always. However, I'm obligated to point out, whatever fault tolerance Valve may or may not have built in... it was insufficient for this event. Until we are informed to the contrary by Valve, we must conclude that they were not geographically redundant... furthermore, to assume they considered a wide-spread power outage in the Northwest not very probable does not bode well for their level of fault tolerance analysis. We needn't wonder if their plan would work, we know it failed. The salient question to be answered now is do they intend to bring their redundancy inline with the need and if not... will their customers accept that position? -Original Message- From: Frazer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 7:43 AM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Whether or not a service provider chooses to deploy redundant services is a decision that is generally made as part of an overall risk-management analysis. Factors such as probability of component failure, business impact and cost are weighed in reaching a decision as to how much money a provider should (and can afford) to invest in redundant service elements. While a systemic power outage is a possibility, it may not be very probable. In fact, there is every likelihood that service elements which would be affected by such a wide outage are not all within Valve's control. We have no information regarding Valve's service infrastructure, but we might assume that it includes fault-tolerant elements (e.g. clustered servers, redundant network paths, etc.) which have been chosen to provide protection from more probable outages (for example, individual hardware failures, network outage of a given carrier). Given the funding resources to do so, most service providers would eagerly embrace geographic redundancy. However, no business has unlimited financial resources and in the end, Valve has to strike a balance between cost and risk, in delivering its services. Valve has an obligation to its investors to make balanced spending decisions and deliver sustainable profitability as much as it needs to deliver reasonable service levels to its customers. As well, the cost of complete redundancy would almost certainly have to be borne in the price of the product. While the end-user impact was certainly real, it is not, after all, an air traffic control system. last night, our servers were full again. I think Valve did a respectable job in restoring services in a timely fashion. No doubt they were extremely motivated to do so. It appeared to me that they followed a prioritized approach, first restoring services critical to supporting game-play. While this simply may have been a sequence imposed by the situation, versus any kind of altruistic service policy, the net effect was the same. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Scott Tuttle Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 4:23 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Such redundancy is Networking 101 and Programming 101... You can choose to ignore it if you like... But in the real word it is fact . Valve is probably making enough money to make it reasonable for them to invest in a redundant system for that money making aparatus. That is Economics 101. You think it looks good to investors that the backbone of the system went down for the entire world because of one geological disaster? You think that's a good selling point for software developers that want to bring their product to market? 273,468 game players couldn't play because Valve had all their eggs in that one geographical basket. Wise business decision? You decide... Ok maybe they are 500 level courses but you still get the point :D -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 2:57 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts All I'm seeing is whining, pettiness, and monday morning quarterbacking. Lets try this. If anyone out there has a diagram of the Valve infrastructure, and a complete understanding of who they contract with for what services and facilities, then lets see it. I only am reading people bitching about what Valve should have done over the last 10 years, and I could do it better, without any reguard or perspective on what the real world impact things may be having in the Seattle area.
Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts
-- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] One thing constantly being missed is that section C of paragraph 9 of Steam Subscriber agreement which every one of us agreed to states that: VALVE DOES NOT GUARANTEE CONTINUOUS, ERROR-FREE, VIRUS-FREE OR SECURE OPERATION AND ACCESS TO STEAM, THE STEAM SOFTWARE, YOUR ACCOUNT AND/OR YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS(S). It means we all agreed with the fact that we can not demand Valve to support Steam at all. The fact that Valve restored the service reasonably quick means they don't want to loose customers and profit but does not mean they had obligations towards us to do so. Another thing that should be considered is overall network downtime throughout the year. What was that? less than 12 hours overall? Meaning availability is about 99.8%... Not the best figure for mission critical application but pretty much reasonable for gaming services. Regards, Newbie -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 7:36:13 -0600 Subject: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts All of these post on this subject and still NOTHING FROM VALVE!! Any bets on what their gonna do? My moneys on nothing From: Edward Luna [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2006/12/19 Tue AM 07:18:14 CST To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Very well said Frazer, as always. However, I'm obligated to point out, whatever fault tolerance Valve may or may not have built in... it was insufficient for this event. Until we are informed to the contrary by Valve, we must conclude that they were not geographically redundant... furthermore, to assume they considered a wide-spread power outage in the Northwest not very probable does not bode well for their level of fault tolerance analysis. We needn't wonder if their plan would work, we know it failed. The salient question to be answered now is do they intend to bring their redundancy inline with the need and if not... will their customers accept that position? -Original Message- From: Frazer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 7:43 AM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Whether or not a service provider chooses to deploy redundant services is a decision that is generally made as part of an overall risk-management analysis. Factors such as probability of component failure, business impact and cost are weighed in reaching a decision as to how much money a provider should (and can afford) to invest in redundant service elements. While a systemic power outage is a possibility, it may not be very probable. In fact, there is every likelihood that service elements which would be affected by such a wide outage are not all within Valve's control. We have no information regarding Valve's service infrastructure, but we might assume that it includes fault-tolerant elements (e.g. clustered servers, redundant network paths, etc.) which have been chosen to provide protection from more probable outages (for example, individual hardware failures, network outage of a given carrier). Given the funding resources to do so, most service providers would eagerly embrace geographic redundancy. However, no business has unlimited financial resources and in the end, Valve has to strike a balance between cost and risk, in delivering its services. Valve has an obligation to its investors to make balanced spending decisions and deliver sustainable profitability as much as it needs to deliver reasonable service levels to its customers. As well, the cost of complete redundancy would almost certainly have to be borne in the price of the product. While the end-user impact was certainly real, it is not, after all, an air traffic control system. last night, our servers were full again. I think Valve did a respectable job in restoring services in a timely fashion. No doubt they were extremely motivated to do so. It appeared to me that they followed a prioritized approach, first restoring services critical to supporting game-play. While this simply may have been a sequence imposed by the situation, versus any kind of altruistic service policy, the net effect was the same. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Scott Tuttle Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 4:23 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Such redundancy is Networking 101 and Programming 101... You can choose to ignore it if you like... But in the real word it is fact . Valve is probably making enough money to make it reasonable for them to invest in a redundant system for that money making aparatus. That is Economics 101. You think it looks good to investors that the backbone of the system went down for the entire world
Re: [hlds] Valve...can we get the connect command for redirect in SCRDS?
Don't forget, we need to pay taxes =) Pubbers may find it annoying to be redirected, but they might also find it annoying to not be able to connect to a server showing 20/23 because of 3 reserve slots. We use redirects to help players find a server to play on. We use(d) redirects to distribute players, not alter players rates, etc. I'm not entirely susre how this would be abused, though I can see it being annoying. I'll stop using quotes when you start acknowledging the other POV, wim. And thanks for zBlock, it was a very useful plugin. Cheers, SJ On 12/18/06, Chris Barnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Wim, Please stop telling people they don't need stuff. Sorry to those who have read this before. We don't need to play CS:S We don't need to play DOD:S We don't need mods. We don't need food. We don't need air. The only thing in life we need to do is die. That's why we all pay so much money to practice killing people. People say that automatic redirects are annoying as hell. Fine. Server admins recognise that therefore we want a COMPROMISE solution which redirects people with their PERMISSION. Cheers. Chris. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Wim Barelds Sent: 18 December 2006 18:11 To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Valve...can we get the connect command for redirect in SCRDS? -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] I do give a crap about admin problems and alike, if I didn't I wouldn't have been 1 of the co-authors of zBlock, among a crapload of other stuff. IMO; it's important to not have the feature from a player's point of view, and it's not all that important to have the feature from a server admin point of view. On 12/18/06, Newbie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] The guy speaks from the player's POV and simply doesn't give a thing about admins' problems like servers migration or load balancing. Newbie -Original Message- From: Roman Hatsiev [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 14:42:43 +0300 Subject: Re: [hlds] Valve...can we get the connect command for redirect in SCRDS? Now I see. There must be only two opinions about everything - yours and wrong one. Let me stick to the wrong one please as I'm pretty happy with it :) On 18/12/06, Wim Barelds [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] You don't need it either, plus pretty much every player that ever gets redirected finds it annoying as fuck. I'm not saying you couldn't find ways to use/abuse it, I'm sure you could and would. But you don't need it. On 12/18/06, Roman Hatsiev [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Looks like your only argument presented in different wordings is I don't need it, . The fact that you don't need this tool or don't know how to properly apply this tool does not make it less valuable to other admins. And I'm not going to waste my time convincing you that you need it because with your single server you don't :) On 18/12/06, Wim Barelds [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] Regulars knew the domain name, and it was no problem at all. I did not see any kind of player drop on our server when we relocated. (would you rather join an empty or populated server?). I would rather join a populated server, which I would expect to join when I do. I think by load balancing it's more meant to keep the two or more servers full.. (correct me if I'm wrong). Do you actually play this game? You barely, if ever, get moved to a server worth while. Either the server is empty, has some fucked up gameplay mods, or has piranesi kind of map. No thanks. On 12/18/06, Chris Barnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Oppss I meant: Once the client resolves an IP to that subdomain, the client saves the IP addy in it's favourites and not the domain name. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris Barnett Sent: 18 December 2006 01:32 To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: [hlds] Valve...can we get the connect command for redirect in SCRDS? Automatic server redirects are gone for good. As an admin that never abused them, I'm quite angry at those that did. Such people even used to brag on various forums that their servers were full, but at whose expense? I hope some kind of redirect that asks the user, will be implemented. As for using a sub-domain for a server, it doesn't work...once the client resolves an IP to that subdomain, the client saves the IP addy in it's favourites and
Re: [hlds] Valve...can we get the connect command for redirect in SCRDS?
But they might also find it annoying to not be able to connect to a server showing 20/23 because of 3 reserve slots. I'm afraid to say this but you are doing your reserve slot system wrong then. You want sv_visiblemaxplayers set to 20 ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Valve...can we get the connect command for redirect in SCRDS?
stop this plz i dont want a server, so i say stop thanks bb From: Graham Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Valve...can we get the connect command for redirect in SCRDS? Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 16:17:27 + But they might also find it annoying to not be able to connect to a server showing 20/23 because of 3 reserve slots. I'm afraid to say this but you are doing your reserve slot system wrong then. You want sv_visiblemaxplayers set to 20 ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds _ Qui est-ce qui est très apprécié des Japonais et a toujours quelque chose entre les mains? Live Search le sait et vous ? http://search.live.com/images/results.aspx?q=Manneken%20pisFORM=BIRE ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts
-- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] Considering that STEAM is now a revenue generating service, my bet is Valve will sort this out sooner rather than later, especially since they are now responsible to not only their own games anymore but to a lot of other Game Developers as well. On 12/20/06, Newbie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] One thing constantly being missed is that section C of paragraph 9 of Steam Subscriber agreement which every one of us agreed to states that: VALVE DOES NOT GUARANTEE CONTINUOUS, ERROR-FREE, VIRUS-FREE OR SECURE OPERATION AND ACCESS TO STEAM, THE STEAM SOFTWARE, YOUR ACCOUNT AND/OR YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS(S). It means we all agreed with the fact that we can not demand Valve to support Steam at all. The fact that Valve restored the service reasonably quick means they don't want to loose customers and profit but does not mean they had obligations towards us to do so. Another thing that should be considered is overall network downtime throughout the year. What was that? less than 12 hours overall? Meaning availability is about 99.8%... Not the best figure for mission critical application but pretty much reasonable for gaming services. Regards, Newbie -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 7:36:13 -0600 Subject: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts All of these post on this subject and still NOTHING FROM VALVE!! Any bets on what their gonna do? My moneys on nothing From: Edward Luna [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2006/12/19 Tue AM 07:18:14 CST To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Very well said Frazer, as always. However, I'm obligated to point out, whatever fault tolerance Valve may or may not have built in... it was insufficient for this event. Until we are informed to the contrary by Valve, we must conclude that they were not geographically redundant... furthermore, to assume they considered a wide-spread power outage in the Northwest not very probable does not bode well for their level of fault tolerance analysis. We needn't wonder if their plan would work, we know it failed. The salient question to be answered now is do they intend to bring their redundancy inline with the need and if not... will their customers accept that position? -Original Message- From: Frazer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 7:43 AM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Whether or not a service provider chooses to deploy redundant services is a decision that is generally made as part of an overall risk-management analysis. Factors such as probability of component failure, business impact and cost are weighed in reaching a decision as to how much money a provider should (and can afford) to invest in redundant service elements. While a systemic power outage is a possibility, it may not be very probable. In fact, there is every likelihood that service elements which would be affected by such a wide outage are not all within Valve's control. We have no information regarding Valve's service infrastructure, but we might assume that it includes fault-tolerant elements (e.g. clustered servers, redundant network paths, etc.) which have been chosen to provide protection from more probable outages (for example, individual hardware failures, network outage of a given carrier). Given the funding resources to do so, most service providers would eagerly embrace geographic redundancy. However, no business has unlimited financial resources and in the end, Valve has to strike a balance between cost and risk, in delivering its services. Valve has an obligation to its investors to make balanced spending decisions and deliver sustainable profitability as much as it needs to deliver reasonable service levels to its customers. As well, the cost of complete redundancy would almost certainly have to be borne in the price of the product. While the end-user impact was certainly real, it is not, after all, an air traffic control system. last night, our servers were full again. I think Valve did a respectable job in restoring services in a timely fashion. No doubt they were extremely motivated to do so. It appeared to me that they followed a prioritized approach, first restoring services critical to supporting game-play. While this simply may have been a sequence imposed by the situation, versus any kind of altruistic service policy, the net effect was the same. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Scott Tuttle Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 4:23 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject:
RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts
Who was bitching about not being able to play CS anyways? I`m sorry for the people wherever they are all of them suffering anything I really am. I really don`t watch tv or news much. As for the topic of discussion with is HLDS ADMIN what exactly are u looking to hear from us so you can stop wasting our time? The discussion was about Valves obvious lack of re-investment in their network infrastructure and obviously qualified network support staff. Not about a snow storm or suffering people. Merry Christmas -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 2:43 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Then I guess I may have things backwards in thinking that any personal inconvenience should be outweighed by actual tragety suffered by others. Yeah, not oficially winter, so those people aren't oficially freezing. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003482605_webstormmainb ar17.html Or am I also wrong in also thinking that maybe local repair efforts should be aimed at getting people heat, instead of making sure CS players can get online. And no matter what Valve did or didn't do, they are still relying on outside resources as much as anyone else in the area. Even the fact that it may be the Valve employees, or others that are in charge of keeping things running, are too busy keeping their families warm wouldn't be reason enough for some. Maybe we even found out why people feel that CS, DoD, et. al. are loosing players. It may possibly be the lack of soul and community. Last I checked Winter hasn't begun yet. :)~ Obviously people are not complaining about loss of service as being equivalent to loss of life or livelihood... I think you may have gone a bit overboard with that one. The majority of complaints are centered around an apparent lack of re-investment in infrastructure on Valve's part and it is a valid complaint. Perhaps we have demonstrated too much faith in Valves understanding of the most basic concept in network management... that being, no single point failure should bring a network down. That fact stands on it's own and need not be measured against a lost Christmas for those unfortunate to have been effected by the storms. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 12:27 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Lets keep things in perspective people. Over a million people without power or heat int the middle of winter. Christmas planning for lots of those are out the window because of lost wages, loss of life, and loss of basic services, and people are whining about not being able to play a computer game for a few days, and then exorcising Valve about not having things back online immediately. Lets think about things based on the effects on real people lives instead of using a tragedy to puff one's resume. It's nice to see the spirit of the holidays on display. Netcom had a massive outage in '96 that lasted almost the same duration as this valve outage. At 11:06 AM 12/18/2006, -Mike- wrote: There are far too many 90% empty datacenters practically sitting on top of major exchanges down here in the SF Bay Area (and all over the US) for Valve to have suffered the outage they saw due to storm conditions. I'm sorry, but a decent distributed network architecture with properly configured load balancing hardware takes care of these single points of failure. But hey, what do I know... I only managed Yahoo's mailservers at GlobalCenter, FriendFinder and Lycos' hardware at Exodus, built and managed bulletproof network backbones at @Home and Netcom... So it's not like I'd know anything about engineering a method of preventing a little lack of power, IP dialtone, or overload from taking your biggest cash machine offline. (sigh) Sorry Valve, I'm gainfully employed and I do not consult on the side. -Mike- -Mike- is: Biker ~ Slacker ~ Iconoclast ~ Eclectic Thinker - Original Message From: Roman Hatsiev [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Sent: Sunday, December 17, 2006 11:21:39 PM Subject: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts This is true only as long as you work with tested and widely adopted solution like Active Directory. For closed proprietary system of Steam size designed without redundancy in mind this can be a kind of tricky exercise... Regards, Roman ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list
Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts
That would be nice but I think it would be even better for someone from Valve to say something. Yes, no, go piss up a rope. it don't matter as long as it gives an indication of what they think about this and what they are looking into doing (if anything) to correct it. From: Whisper [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2006/12/19 Tue AM 10:45:00 CST To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] Considering that STEAM is now a revenue generating service, my bet is Valve will sort this out sooner rather than later, especially since they are now responsible to not only their own games anymore but to a lot of other Game Developers as well. On 12/20/06, Newbie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] One thing constantly being missed is that section C of paragraph 9 of Steam Subscriber agreement which every one of us agreed to states that: VALVE DOES NOT GUARANTEE CONTINUOUS, ERROR-FREE, VIRUS-FREE OR SECURE OPERATION AND ACCESS TO STEAM, THE STEAM SOFTWARE, YOUR ACCOUNT AND/OR YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS(S). It means we all agreed with the fact that we can not demand Valve to support Steam at all. The fact that Valve restored the service reasonably quick means they don't want to loose customers and profit but does not mean they had obligations towards us to do so. Another thing that should be considered is overall network downtime throughout the year. What was that? less than 12 hours overall? Meaning availability is about 99.8%... Not the best figure for mission critical application but pretty much reasonable for gaming services. Regards, Newbie -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 7:36:13 -0600 Subject: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts All of these post on this subject and still NOTHING FROM VALVE!! Any bets on what their gonna do? My moneys on nothing From: Edward Luna [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2006/12/19 Tue AM 07:18:14 CST To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Very well said Frazer, as always. However, I'm obligated to point out, whatever fault tolerance Valve may or may not have built in... it was insufficient for this event. Until we are informed to the contrary by Valve, we must conclude that they were not geographically redundant... furthermore, to assume they considered a wide-spread power outage in the Northwest not very probable does not bode well for their level of fault tolerance analysis. We needn't wonder if their plan would work, we know it failed. The salient question to be answered now is do they intend to bring their redundancy inline with the need and if not... will their customers accept that position? -Original Message- From: Frazer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 7:43 AM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Whether or not a service provider chooses to deploy redundant services is a decision that is generally made as part of an overall risk-management analysis. Factors such as probability of component failure, business impact and cost are weighed in reaching a decision as to how much money a provider should (and can afford) to invest in redundant service elements. While a systemic power outage is a possibility, it may not be very probable. In fact, there is every likelihood that service elements which would be affected by such a wide outage are not all within Valve's control. We have no information regarding Valve's service infrastructure, but we might assume that it includes fault-tolerant elements (e.g. clustered servers, redundant network paths, etc.) which have been chosen to provide protection from more probable outages (for example, individual hardware failures, network outage of a given carrier). Given the funding resources to do so, most service providers would eagerly embrace geographic redundancy. However, no business has unlimited financial resources and in the end, Valve has to strike a balance between cost and risk, in delivering its services. Valve has an obligation to its investors to make balanced spending decisions and deliver sustainable profitability as much as it needs to deliver reasonable service levels to its customers. As well, the cost of complete redundancy would almost certainly have to be borne in the price of the product. While the end-user impact was certainly real, it is not, after all, an air traffic control system. last night, our servers were full again. I think Valve did a respectable job in
Re: [hlds] Valve...can we get the connect command for redirect in SCRDS?
-- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] As previously noted, the reserved slots issue could be resolved fairly easily, past that. Please don't get me wrong, I really wouldn't mind a this server recommends these alternatives approach, or link server network kind of solution. I however do oppose to giving admins the connect console command back as it previously were. On 12/19/06, john @ GamersCoalition [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Don't forget, we need to pay taxes =) Pubbers may find it annoying to be redirected, but they might also find it annoying to not be able to connect to a server showing 20/23 because of 3 reserve slots. We use redirects to help players find a server to play on. We use(d) redirects to distribute players, not alter players rates, etc. I'm not entirely susre how this would be abused, though I can see it being annoying. I'll stop using quotes when you start acknowledging the other POV, wim. And thanks for zBlock, it was a very useful plugin. Cheers, SJ On 12/18/06, Chris Barnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Wim, Please stop telling people they don't need stuff. Sorry to those who have read this before. We don't need to play CS:S We don't need to play DOD:S We don't need mods. We don't need food. We don't need air. The only thing in life we need to do is die. That's why we all pay so much money to practice killing people. People say that automatic redirects are annoying as hell. Fine. Server admins recognise that therefore we want a COMPROMISE solution which redirects people with their PERMISSION. Cheers. Chris. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Wim Barelds Sent: 18 December 2006 18:11 To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Valve...can we get the connect command for redirect in SCRDS? -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] I do give a crap about admin problems and alike, if I didn't I wouldn't have been 1 of the co-authors of zBlock, among a crapload of other stuff. IMO; it's important to not have the feature from a player's point of view, and it's not all that important to have the feature from a server admin point of view. On 12/18/06, Newbie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] The guy speaks from the player's POV and simply doesn't give a thing about admins' problems like servers migration or load balancing. Newbie -Original Message- From: Roman Hatsiev [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 14:42:43 +0300 Subject: Re: [hlds] Valve...can we get the connect command for redirect in SCRDS? Now I see. There must be only two opinions about everything - yours and wrong one. Let me stick to the wrong one please as I'm pretty happy with it :) On 18/12/06, Wim Barelds [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] You don't need it either, plus pretty much every player that ever gets redirected finds it annoying as fuck. I'm not saying you couldn't find ways to use/abuse it, I'm sure you could and would. But you don't need it. On 12/18/06, Roman Hatsiev [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Looks like your only argument presented in different wordings is I don't need it, . The fact that you don't need this tool or don't know how to properly apply this tool does not make it less valuable to other admins. And I'm not going to waste my time convincing you that you need it because with your single server you don't :) On 18/12/06, Wim Barelds [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] Regulars knew the domain name, and it was no problem at all. I did not see any kind of player drop on our server when we relocated. (would you rather join an empty or populated server?). I would rather join a populated server, which I would expect to join when I do. I think by load balancing it's more meant to keep the two or more servers full.. (correct me if I'm wrong). Do you actually play this game? You barely, if ever, get moved to a server worth while. Either the server is empty, has some fucked up gameplay mods, or has piranesi kind of map. No thanks. On 12/18/06, Chris Barnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Oppss I meant: Once the client resolves an IP to that subdomain, the client saves the IP addy in it's favourites and not the domain name. -Original Message- From:
Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts
You are right, networking 101 teaches that, I took the networking class in high school, and got my NET+ certification, Even I know that backups are important, and I'm a college freshman (well I have enough credits to be a sophomore) I have backups, and they work, my laptop decided one day to disable all the user accounts and delete any that were useful (even administrator was disabled) i got back up and running in 5 minutes, and in 15 i had my programs back, and in the end spent more time trying to fix the laptop than trying to recover from it. after taking networking 101, I now have my computers (and switches and routers) in my dorm on UPSes, and on a cart that in a power outage of my floor could be wheeled downstairs, or in an Internet outage, I have a very long (100 M) cable to reach any other part of the building, and I could make it longer with a repeater if I had to, but it is long enough. Valve has a lotbigger budget, and paying customers and a lot better trained people than me, and should have much better backups and redundancy, I can survive a loss of service to my floor, with minimal downtime of my services, so valve should be able to stand the loss of a city (even by nuke) with minimal affect to the rest of the world, if the whole US was out of power, or gone by nuking, then I would be okay with them being off line, for a few days Scott Tuttle wrote: Such redundancy is Networking 101 and Programming 101... You can choose to ignore it if you like... But in the real word it is fact . Valve is probably making enough money to make it reasonable for them to invest in a redundant system for that money making aparatus. That is Economics 101. You think it looks good to investors that the backbone of the system went down for the entire world because of one geological disaster? You think that's a good selling point for software developers that want to bring their product to market? 273,468 game players couldn't play because Valve had all their eggs in that one geographical basket. Wise business decision? You decide... Ok maybe they are 500 level courses but you still get the point :D -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 2:57 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts All I'm seeing is whining, pettiness, and monday morning quarterbacking. Lets try this. If anyone out there has a diagram of the Valve infrastructure, and a complete understanding of who they contract with for what services and facilities, then lets see it. I only am reading people bitching about what Valve should have done over the last 10 years, and I could do it better, without any reguard or perspective on what the real world impact things may be having in the Seattle area. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
RE: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts
This is a multi-part message in MIME format. -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] Still sounds like alot of money invested for nothing. Where is the ROI for Valve? Will this cost them sales? I say no, the software has been bought and paid for. By the time the next release rolls around everyone will have forgotten about this. Did they lose data? Nope. Lawsuits? Nope. Why then would they dump many thousands of dollars into a more reliable and redundant system? Businesses do things that will help them make money and this won't. Anyone from Valve care to chime in?? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of chad Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 4:50 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts You are right, networking 101 teaches that, I took the networking class in high school, and got my NET+ certification, Even I know that backups are important, and I'm a college freshman (well I have enough credits to be a sophomore) I have backups, and they work, my laptop decided one day to disable all the user accounts and delete any that were useful (even administrator was disabled) i got back up and running in 5 minutes, and in 15 i had my programs back, and in the end spent more time trying to fix the laptop than trying to recover from it. after taking networking 101, I now have my computers (and switches and routers) in my dorm on UPSes, and on a cart that in a power outage of my floor could be wheeled downstairs, or in an Internet outage, I have a very long (100 M) cable to reach any other part of the building, and I could make it longer with a repeater if I had to, but it is long enough. Valve has a lotbigger budget, and paying customers and a lot better trained people than me, and should have much better backups and redundancy, I can survive a loss of service to my floor, with minimal downtime of my services, so valve should be able to stand the loss of a city (even by nuke) with minimal affect to the rest of the world, if the whole US was out of power, or gone by nuking, then I would be okay with them being off line, for a few days Scott Tuttle wrote: Such redundancy is Networking 101 and Programming 101... You can choose to ignore it if you like... But in the real word it is fact . Valve is probably making enough money to make it reasonable for them to invest in a redundant system for that money making aparatus. That is Economics 101. You think it looks good to investors that the backbone of the system went down for the entire world because of one geological disaster? You think that's a good selling point for software developers that want to bring their product to market? 273,468 game players couldn't play because Valve had all their eggs in that one geographical basket. Wise business decision? You decide... Ok maybe they are 500 level courses but you still get the point :D -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 2:57 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts All I'm seeing is whining, pettiness, and monday morning quarterbacking. Lets try this. If anyone out there has a diagram of the Valve infrastructure, and a complete understanding of who they contract with for what services and facilities, then lets see it. I only am reading people bitching about what Valve should have done over the last 10 years, and I could do it better, without any reguard or perspective on what the real world impact things may be having in the Seattle area. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds -- Cal, Stanford -Students Only Classifieds Students only , Pay nothing to Buy Sell textbooks, furniture more. http://a8-asy.a8ww.net/a8-ads/adftrclick?redirectid=20e9b7562a9c927234e3ca61ecb4660b -- ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
RE: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts
You would have to ask their sales force if being able to say the system is redundant would help them make sales. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of bob johnson Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 5:45 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts This is a multi-part message in MIME format. -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] Still sounds like alot of money invested for nothing. Where is the ROI for Valve? Will this cost them sales? I say no, the software has been bought and paid for. By the time the next release rolls around everyone will have forgotten about this. Did they lose data? Nope. Lawsuits? Nope. Why then would they dump many thousands of dollars into a more reliable and redundant system? Businesses do things that will help them make money and this won't. Anyone from Valve care to chime in?? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of chad Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 4:50 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts You are right, networking 101 teaches that, I took the networking class in high school, and got my NET+ certification, Even I know that backups are important, and I'm a college freshman (well I have enough credits to be a sophomore) I have backups, and they work, my laptop decided one day to disable all the user accounts and delete any that were useful (even administrator was disabled) i got back up and running in 5 minutes, and in 15 i had my programs back, and in the end spent more time trying to fix the laptop than trying to recover from it. after taking networking 101, I now have my computers (and switches and routers) in my dorm on UPSes, and on a cart that in a power outage of my floor could be wheeled downstairs, or in an Internet outage, I have a very long (100 M) cable to reach any other part of the building, and I could make it longer with a repeater if I had to, but it is long enough. Valve has a lotbigger budget, and paying customers and a lot better trained people than me, and should have much better backups and redundancy, I can survive a loss of service to my floor, with minimal downtime of my services, so valve should be able to stand the loss of a city (even by nuke) with minimal affect to the rest of the world, if the whole US was out of power, or gone by nuking, then I would be okay with them being off line, for a few days Scott Tuttle wrote: Such redundancy is Networking 101 and Programming 101... You can choose to ignore it if you like... But in the real word it is fact . Valve is probably making enough money to make it reasonable for them to invest in a redundant system for that money making aparatus. That is Economics 101. You think it looks good to investors that the backbone of the system went down for the entire world because of one geological disaster? You think that's a good selling point for software developers that want to bring their product to market? 273,468 game players couldn't play because Valve had all their eggs in that one geographical basket. Wise business decision? You decide... Ok maybe they are 500 level courses but you still get the point :D -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 2:57 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts All I'm seeing is whining, pettiness, and monday morning quarterbacking. Lets try this. If anyone out there has a diagram of the Valve infrastructure, and a complete understanding of who they contract with for what services and facilities, then lets see it. I only am reading people bitching about what Valve should have done over the last 10 years, and I could do it better, without any reguard or perspective on what the real world impact things may be having in the Seattle area. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds -- Cal, Stanford -Students Only Classifieds Students only , Pay nothing to Buy Sell textbooks, furniture more. http://a8-asy.a8ww.net/a8-ads/adftrclick?redirectid=20e9b7562a 9c927234e3ca61ecb4660b -- ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
RE: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts
Dear Alfred and Valve, First of all, let me say that I have had a lot of enjoyment from Counter Strike Source, so much so that I created GotGames.com.au in Australia to specifically address the lack of a serious CSS competitive community in Australia and New Zealand. In a little over 6 months, we have created the biggest source community in Australia and New Zealand. The updates and changes that you have made to the game have been very positive on the whole. Fixing the crouch POV and the SourceTV was a huge boost for the competitive scene and much appreciated. I am writing to you in the hope that you will address 4 issues that several programmers believe would take one competent programmer less than 1 day resolve. If these 4 simple changes were made, it would really help the competitive community and help organisations such as WCG, CPL and CEVO make the change to source. These issues involve no changes to the engine itself but merely the addition of some simple cvars. 1. Dead body Cam, when you die you have approximately 3-5 seconds to tell your teammates through Ventrilo and Teamspeak which way the opposition went before the camera view changes to one of your teammates. A cvar that turns off the dead body cam so that when you die, the camera view instantly changes to your teammates POV removing the ability for you to be able to spectate the enemy illegally while you are dead. This simple cvar would make the world of difference to the online competitive community. 2. Dead players being able to tell their live teammates through Ventrilo or Teamspeak that the opposition has just picked up the bomb because the scoreboard tells players when a bomb has been picked up the opposition. A simple cvar would resolve this and could be implemented very easily. 3. The creation of a cvar that turns the need to purchase ammo on, obviously this would be more involved than the first 2 but couldn't be to hard assuming that you still have the ammo code somewhere. By removing the need to purchase ammo you removed a substantial amount of tactics from the game, I also agree though removing ammo for the average player is a good idea, hence the best option is a cvar. 4. A cvar that increases the walking speed for competitive purposes, again a very simple change that would be welcomed by the competitive community without affecting the public community. So as you can see, these are very simple and easy changes that Valve could make that would significantly improve the competitive community and I'm certain that 95% of the competitive community would agree with me. Alex Hybrid Mottshaw This message is intended solely for the individual (s) and entity(s) addressed. It is confidential and may contain legally privileged information. The use, copying or distribution of this message or any information it contains, by anyone other than the addressee, is prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify [EMAIL PROTECTED] * -Original Message- From: Whisper [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, 20 December 2006 3:45 AM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] Considering that STEAM is now a revenue generating service, my bet is Valve will sort this out sooner rather than later, especially since they are now responsible to not only their own games anymore but to a lot of other Game Developers as well. On 12/20/06, Newbie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] One thing constantly being missed is that section C of paragraph 9 of Steam Subscriber agreement which every one of us agreed to states that: VALVE DOES NOT GUARANTEE CONTINUOUS, ERROR-FREE, VIRUS-FREE OR SECURE OPERATION AND ACCESS TO STEAM, THE STEAM SOFTWARE, YOUR ACCOUNT AND/OR YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS(S). It means we all agreed with the fact that we can not demand Valve to support Steam at all. The fact that Valve restored the service reasonably quick means they don't want to loose customers and profit but does not mean they had obligations towards us to do so. Another thing that should be considered is overall network downtime throughout the year. What was that? less than 12 hours overall? Meaning availability is about 99.8%... Not the best figure for mission critical application but pretty much reasonable for gaming services. Regards, Newbie -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 7:36:13 -0600 Subject: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts All of these post on this subject and still NOTHING FROM VALVE!! Any bets on what their gonna do? My moneys on nothing From: Edward Luna [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2006/12/19 Tue AM 07:18:14 CST To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts Very well said Frazer, as always. However, I'm obligated to
Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts
did somebody say they have switches and routers in thier dorm room on ups's? what in the world would you need a switch in your dorm room for? multiple vlans in your room? anyway, redundancy is always important. but you are right, it is not cost effective. Remember though, not that steam supports more and more games (and gets paid for it) would it not be more attractive for developers to know that someone will be able to play thier game no matter what the weather is like in seattle? - Original Message - From: Scott Tuttle [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 8:07 PM Subject: RE: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts You would have to ask their sales force if being able to say the system is redundant would help them make sales. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of bob johnson Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 5:45 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts This is a multi-part message in MIME format. -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] Still sounds like alot of money invested for nothing. Where is the ROI for Valve? Will this cost them sales? I say no, the software has been bought and paid for. By the time the next release rolls around everyone will have forgotten about this. Did they lose data? Nope. Lawsuits? Nope. Why then would they dump many thousands of dollars into a more reliable and redundant system? Businesses do things that will help them make money and this won't. Anyone from Valve care to chime in?? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of chad Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 4:50 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts You are right, networking 101 teaches that, I took the networking class in high school, and got my NET+ certification, Even I know that backups are important, and I'm a college freshman (well I have enough credits to be a sophomore) I have backups, and they work, my laptop decided one day to disable all the user accounts and delete any that were useful (even administrator was disabled) i got back up and running in 5 minutes, and in 15 i had my programs back, and in the end spent more time trying to fix the laptop than trying to recover from it. after taking networking 101, I now have my computers (and switches and routers) in my dorm on UPSes, and on a cart that in a power outage of my floor could be wheeled downstairs, or in an Internet outage, I have a very long (100 M) cable to reach any other part of the building, and I could make it longer with a repeater if I had to, but it is long enough. Valve has a lotbigger budget, and paying customers and a lot better trained people than me, and should have much better backups and redundancy, I can survive a loss of service to my floor, with minimal downtime of my services, so valve should be able to stand the loss of a city (even by nuke) with minimal affect to the rest of the world, if the whole US was out of power, or gone by nuking, then I would be okay with them being off line, for a few days Scott Tuttle wrote: Such redundancy is Networking 101 and Programming 101... You can choose to ignore it if you like... But in the real word it is fact . Valve is probably making enough money to make it reasonable for them to invest in a redundant system for that money making aparatus. That is Economics 101. You think it looks good to investors that the backbone of the system went down for the entire world because of one geological disaster? You think that's a good selling point for software developers that want to bring their product to market? 273,468 game players couldn't play because Valve had all their eggs in that one geographical basket. Wise business decision? You decide... Ok maybe they are 500 level courses but you still get the point :D -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 2:57 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts All I'm seeing is whining, pettiness, and monday morning quarterbacking. Lets try this. If anyone out there has a diagram of the Valve infrastructure, and a complete understanding of who they contract with for what services and facilities, then lets see it. I only am reading people bitching about what Valve should have done over the last 10 years, and I could do it better, without any reguard or perspective on what the real world impact things may be having in the Seattle area.
Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts
I have switches to connect my domain controller to my file server to my laptop. the UPS was $1 at the school surplus sale, and was not even my best find. How else will I back up my profile automatically, and install software on my HP laptop that breaks like every 3 months and needs to get software and data back on it again. Also, I use the switch to connect my game servers (dual pIII 1.3 ghz with soon to be a gig of ram each, and no CD drive, or usb booting support that cost $5.00 each and come with a 4 hour parts delivery warranty until October next year) to my RIS server to install windows without CD's, but with cheap cd keys we get at school. If you know a better way for free to get access to my 950 gigabyte file server, while it is not a DC because that slows it down a ton, and have the ability to access it securely from anywhere on the internet, install windows without a cd drive, and be able to instantly recover from my laptop deciding it doesn't like me, please email me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] oh and soon I will be doing off site replication of important shares between my dorm and my parents house in case of a disaster like the sprinklers spraying that rusty copper conducting water on my servers, or their house burning down. no vlans here, switches are like $2.00 for a 16 port 10/100 with more than 1.6 gbps internal bandwidth NIB on ebay, so I just use switches and wrt54g's with dd-wrt v.23 firmware to segment my network. oh and yes I did say that. Ryan Brady wrote: did somebody say they have switches and routers in thier dorm room on ups's? what in the world would you need a switch in your dorm room for? multiple vlans in your room? anyway, redundancy is always important. but you are right, it is not cost effective. Remember though, not that steam supports more and more games (and gets paid for it) would it not be more attractive for developers to know that someone will be able to play thier game no matter what the weather is like in seattle? - Original Message - From: Scott Tuttle [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 8:07 PM Subject: RE: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts You would have to ask their sales force if being able to say the system is redundant would help them make sales. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of bob johnson Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 5:45 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: RE: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts This is a multi-part message in MIME format. -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] Still sounds like alot of money invested for nothing. Where is the ROI for Valve? Will this cost them sales? I say no, the software has been bought and paid for. By the time the next release rolls around everyone will have forgotten about this. Did they lose data? Nope. Lawsuits? Nope. Why then would they dump many thousands of dollars into a more reliable and redundant system? Businesses do things that will help them make money and this won't. Anyone from Valve care to chime in?? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of chad Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 4:50 PM To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Post-outage thoughts You are right, networking 101 teaches that, I took the networking class in high school, and got my NET+ certification, Even I know that backups are important, and I'm a college freshman (well I have enough credits to be a sophomore) I have backups, and they work, my laptop decided one day to disable all the user accounts and delete any that were useful (even administrator was disabled) i got back up and running in 5 minutes, and in 15 i had my programs back, and in the end spent more time trying to fix the laptop than trying to recover from it. after taking networking 101, I now have my computers (and switches and routers) in my dorm on UPSes, and on a cart that in a power outage of my floor could be wheeled downstairs, or in an Internet outage, I have a very long (100 M) cable to reach any other part of the building, and I could make it longer with a repeater if I had to, but it is long enough. Valve has a lotbigger budget, and paying customers and a lot better trained people than me, and should have much better backups and redundancy, I can survive a loss of service to my floor, with minimal downtime of my services, so valve should be able to stand the loss of a city (even by nuke) with minimal affect to the rest of the world, if the whole US was out of power, or gone by nuking, then I would be okay with them being off line, for a few days Scott Tuttle wrote: Such redundancy is Networking 101 and Programming 101... You can choose to ignore it if you like... But in the real word it is fact . Valve is probably making enough money to make it reasonable for them to invest in a redundant system for that money making aparatus. That is Economics 101. You
Re: [hlds] Valve...can we get the connect command for redirect in SCRDS?
Everyone hate being kicked or banned. I suggest removing kick and banid commands from the game. It must be a player's choice whether to play on this server, not server operator's. Also kick and ban are widely abused by many server operators, we must do something to protect players! The freedom of choice for players is everything, while server operators deserve no choice at all. On 20/12/06, Joshua Handelsman-Woolf (DogGunn) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Oh noes, please not the redirect, that annoyed me. I hated being switched to another server without actually being given the option. john @ GamersCoalition wrote: No reason to be afraid; thanks for the recommendation. On 12/19/06, Graham Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But they might also find it annoying to not be able to connect to a server showing 20/23 because of 3 reserve slots. I'm afraid to say this but you are doing your reserve slot system wrong then. You want sv_visiblemaxplayers set to 20 ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds -- [Mmmm]stuttering.john .gc Together we spawn. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gamerscoalition.com ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Valve...can we get the connect command for redirect in SCRDS?
Well I think you may of taken it the wrong way. What I'm suggesting is, if there was to forced functions such as the connect command, it would be nice to have a dialog or something to say you have been recommended to move to this server instead of just joining another server. Roman Hatsiev wrote: Everyone hate being kicked or banned. I suggest removing kick and banid commands from the game. It must be a player's choice whether to play on this server, not server operator's. Also kick and ban are widely abused by many server operators, we must do something to protect players! The freedom of choice for players is everything, while server operators deserve no choice at all. On 20/12/06, Joshua Handelsman-Woolf (DogGunn) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Oh noes, please not the redirect, that annoyed me. I hated being switched to another server without actually being given the option. john @ GamersCoalition wrote: No reason to be afraid; thanks for the recommendation. On 12/19/06, Graham Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But they might also find it annoying to not be able to connect to a server showing 20/23 because of 3 reserve slots. I'm afraid to say this but you are doing your reserve slot system wrong then. You want sv_visiblemaxplayers set to 20 ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds -- [Mmmm]stuttering.john .gc Together we spawn. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gamerscoalition.com ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
