News
By Joel Gratz, Founding Meteorologist Posted 12 years ago March 8, 2012
What happened to our website?
First off, let me apologize for the issues you've (most likely) experienced getting to our website over the last few days. Here's a quick back story on what happened.
Until this week, our website was hosted by Dreamhost. This means that our site was running off of servers in their facility. When you typed in "OpenSnow.com" in your browser, the magic of the internet would tell your computer to go to our server at Dreamhost's facilities, grab the data, and display this data as the webpage on your computer.
During the last two weeks of February, Dreamhost had repeated "issues" with their servers which caused our website to go down multiple times. Sometimes for minutes, other times for hours. I don't fully understand what the "issues" were on Dreamhost's servers, but it doesn't matter. The fact was that our site was down, repeatedly, and this was unacceptable.
We began looking for a new hosting company and a fan of OpenSnow suggested we use WestHost. We did the research and found that this was a good suggestion. While we are going to completely revamp our strategy over the off season, we needed a good "temporary" fix for hosting during the rest of this season and WestHost seemed to be it.
On Monday night, March 5th, we planned to take the site down at 9pm, move files from our old server at Dreamhost to our new server at WestHost, and then get the site back up later that night. Andrew Murray coordinated all of this and the move was completed in two hours. Perfecto!
Well, not so fast. There are two parts to moving servers. The first part is to actually get our files from our old server to our new server. That happened perfectly. One step done.
The second step, though, is mostly out of our control and takes 24-48 hours to complete. And what is this step? It's telling all the traffic signals that exist between your computer and our server which way to point. In other words, when you type OpenSnow.com into your browser, there are anywhere from 5-30+ steps for that request to get sent around the internet and properly wind up at our server. Think of each step like an intersection...there are choices of which direction to go and the computers should send your request for OpenSnow.com in the right direction so it hits our server.
The problem is that all of these intersections take some time to figure out where our new server is. It used to be at Dreamhost, but it's now at WestHost. This means the route that the signal took to our old server at Dreamhost must be changed completely so it goes to WestHost. Unfortunately, there is no magic switch to instantaneously update all of the "intersections" to now route the signal in the correct direction. This happens over time, usually 24-48 hours, and as far as I'm aware, there's really no way to speed up the process.
So over the last two days, we've been waiting for these "intersections" to all update and point to our new server. This happened quickly for some people and still hasn't happened for others, and it all depends on how you get online (Comcast, Quest, AT&T, etc) and where that signal goes. And it's even more maddening than that, as some of Comcast's customers can get through to our site, but not all. And this is true for other internet providers. Ugh...the humanity!
We did ask our hosting company to "reset" some things yesterday (Wednesday), and this might mean another 24 hours until everything is solved and everyone can get back on our site.
Did we know that this whole process would be a pain? Yup.
Did we know that it would be *this* much of a pain? Nope.
Did we need to switch hosting companies anyway, even if it was a pain? Yup.
So that's the scoop. Most people can access the site with no problems today. If you're still having issues, typing in http://69.36.165.253/ will get you directly to our server and save you from going through all the "intersections" which might lead your computer in the wrong direction and return an error.
Again, sorry for making your life free of OpenSnow.com over the last day or two, and thanks for sticking with us! If you have any questions, feel free to email me ([email protected]) or for more technical questions, email Andrew Murray ([email protected]).
JOEL
PS - I am NOT a network engineer, so if my layman's explanation is off base, please correct me in the comments or send me an email...I like to learn!
Until this week, our website was hosted by Dreamhost. This means that our site was running off of servers in their facility. When you typed in "OpenSnow.com" in your browser, the magic of the internet would tell your computer to go to our server at Dreamhost's facilities, grab the data, and display this data as the webpage on your computer.
During the last two weeks of February, Dreamhost had repeated "issues" with their servers which caused our website to go down multiple times. Sometimes for minutes, other times for hours. I don't fully understand what the "issues" were on Dreamhost's servers, but it doesn't matter. The fact was that our site was down, repeatedly, and this was unacceptable.
We began looking for a new hosting company and a fan of OpenSnow suggested we use WestHost. We did the research and found that this was a good suggestion. While we are going to completely revamp our strategy over the off season, we needed a good "temporary" fix for hosting during the rest of this season and WestHost seemed to be it.
On Monday night, March 5th, we planned to take the site down at 9pm, move files from our old server at Dreamhost to our new server at WestHost, and then get the site back up later that night. Andrew Murray coordinated all of this and the move was completed in two hours. Perfecto!
Well, not so fast. There are two parts to moving servers. The first part is to actually get our files from our old server to our new server. That happened perfectly. One step done.
The second step, though, is mostly out of our control and takes 24-48 hours to complete. And what is this step? It's telling all the traffic signals that exist between your computer and our server which way to point. In other words, when you type OpenSnow.com into your browser, there are anywhere from 5-30+ steps for that request to get sent around the internet and properly wind up at our server. Think of each step like an intersection...there are choices of which direction to go and the computers should send your request for OpenSnow.com in the right direction so it hits our server.
The problem is that all of these intersections take some time to figure out where our new server is. It used to be at Dreamhost, but it's now at WestHost. This means the route that the signal took to our old server at Dreamhost must be changed completely so it goes to WestHost. Unfortunately, there is no magic switch to instantaneously update all of the "intersections" to now route the signal in the correct direction. This happens over time, usually 24-48 hours, and as far as I'm aware, there's really no way to speed up the process.
So over the last two days, we've been waiting for these "intersections" to all update and point to our new server. This happened quickly for some people and still hasn't happened for others, and it all depends on how you get online (Comcast, Quest, AT&T, etc) and where that signal goes. And it's even more maddening than that, as some of Comcast's customers can get through to our site, but not all. And this is true for other internet providers. Ugh...the humanity!
We did ask our hosting company to "reset" some things yesterday (Wednesday), and this might mean another 24 hours until everything is solved and everyone can get back on our site.
Did we know that this whole process would be a pain? Yup.
Did we know that it would be *this* much of a pain? Nope.
Did we need to switch hosting companies anyway, even if it was a pain? Yup.
So that's the scoop. Most people can access the site with no problems today. If you're still having issues, typing in http://69.36.165.253/ will get you directly to our server and save you from going through all the "intersections" which might lead your computer in the wrong direction and return an error.
Again, sorry for making your life free of OpenSnow.com over the last day or two, and thanks for sticking with us! If you have any questions, feel free to email me ([email protected]) or for more technical questions, email Andrew Murray ([email protected]).
JOEL
PS - I am NOT a network engineer, so if my layman's explanation is off base, please correct me in the comments or send me an email...I like to learn!
About The Author
Joel Gratz
Founding Meteorologist
Joel Gratz is the Founding Meteorologist of OpenSnow and has lived in Boulder, Colorado since 2003. Before moving to Colorado, he spent his childhood as a (not very fast) ski racer in eastern Pennsylvania.
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