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Post by davee39 on Apr 4, 2014 9:56:17 GMT
The site seriously misbehaves before, during, and for several minutes after the closure of a large auction. The cashback appears to have increased bid volumes. My suspicion is that the open API is allowing excessive BOT Bidding which is acting like a DDOS (Distributed denial of service) attack. Whenever a bot bid is kicked out a replacement bid kicks in, this probably puts far more strain on the server during the background handshaking than that caused by Human bidders. At the same time the site attempts, and dismally fails, to provide real time updates. in the last few minutes the real-time display is garbage, dead bids show live, the counters go in the opposite direction, bids fail to appear or appear several times, and the bid totals are wrong. Until FC get a competent web builder and an adequate server the live update should be disabled. This would free up resources for faster and more reliable manual refresh.
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oldgrumpy
Member of DD Central
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Post by oldgrumpy on Apr 4, 2014 10:06:28 GMT
I had four tries to get into loan requests about half an hour ago, each one about a minute and three failures to load properly. I'm on now though, and got a little bit of that A+. I see two "reasonable" C- coming up, (and one appalling one - apparently). I do have a little play on those if I think they look better than C-. Then there are the big A loans which take most of my recycled money at present - if I can get on the page!
It's not good.
in the last few minutes the real-time display is garbage,
Gave up on that months ago! If it is taking any significant site resources it should be removed.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Apr 4, 2014 10:22:26 GMT
I know FC hate suggestions, but here are a few (culled from various forum posts, some of them mine .. some have been suggested more than once) to help their damn problems:
1) Disable 'live update', at least for the last 15 minutes of any auction .. it is useless/misleading, and probably sucks resources.
2) SPACE OUT the auctions to close at 10 or 15 minute intervals. If that requires spacing out the opening of them, then train the staff to do so. Not hardly rocket science.
3) Reduce bid granularity from 0.1% or something else (1% would be fine with me .. although the BOE uses 0.25% for base rate). This reduces number of bids and bid rates at a stroke.
4) Accept 'multi bids' in one transaction (or, much the same thing, allow a large bid to be broken up later for resale). Yes, I know some folks object, but would you rather have one £1k bid hit the system, or 50x £20 in three seconds. The latter screws things up much more, given the mass of data flowing each way (and to/from google analytics and who knows where all else) whenever a bid button gets pressed.
5) Limit either bid rates, or total number of bids per punter. Yes, I know it's hard to enforce, and some waster is bound to want to cheat, but at least =stating a limit= would be a start.
6) Implement dynamic auto bidding at the server end.
or we could just flap our hands, pray to the regulator, sacrifice a new virgin, try some faster hardware, and recode the website in Algol 60.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Apr 4, 2014 10:44:16 GMT
My suspicion is that the open API is allowing excessive BOT Bidding which is acting like a DDOS (Distributed denial of service) attack. Since the open API was never released, this is not the cause of the problem. The API (currently only used in the IPAD app) is limited (by agreement, if you ever get the 'open beta' version) to 3 bids per minute anyway. The serious flipper engines run at hundreds of times that rate, and they don't use the API, they just automate Internet Explorer (or direct HTML engines in windoze or Unix), and no, they don't wait for the bid button to light up again.
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Post by davee39 on Apr 4, 2014 13:21:39 GMT
My suspicion is that the open API is allowing excessive BOT Bidding which is acting like a DDOS (Distributed denial of service) attack. Since the open API was never released, this is not the cause of the problem. The API (currently only used in the IPAD app) is limited (by agreement, if you ever get the 'open beta' version) to 3 bids per minute anyway. The serious flipper engines run at hundreds of times that rate, and they don't use the API, they just automate Internet Explorer (or direct HTML engines in windoze or Unix), and no, they don't wait for the bid button to light up again. Thanks for the info, I learn something every day. So It looks like FC needs to limit (or slow down) bids in some way based on user or IP address. Despite having no knowledge of web servers I am sure something could be done.
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jimbo
Posts: 234
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Post by jimbo on Apr 4, 2014 13:52:44 GMT
Relational databases are my forte rather than pretty web sites (although am moving more into middle tier development these days), but something could definitely be done. All they have to do is apply their "3 bid per minute" rule for the (unreleased) open API across all site users, or at least those making more than one bid per second. Possibly, they'd hit some manual bidders with this, but I don't think any restriction of this nature could ever be perfect.
There is a different perspective though. Speed bids drop the interest rate bands far more quickly, I suspect I wouldn't find many on this forum who'd disagree with me if I expressed an opinion stating I think FC prefer lower rates for platform borrowers; a number of them being broker-introduced. Maybe they think the site instability is worth living with as a bearable evil while they keep adding scale...
The cashback offer implies to me they want the current rates lower on larger loans...
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Apr 4, 2014 14:40:40 GMT
The cash back offer implied to me that they just want them funded ... At 15% maximum bid rate, and secondary market selling at 14%, HNW market makers (flippers) just won't bother to soak up any shortfall. On 5702 for instance, given the credit rating, I'd want about 17% to even jump in, and Big buyers probably look for more than that...the cashback may just save it.
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blender
Member of DD Central
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Post by blender on Apr 4, 2014 15:42:57 GMT
That's right. It was saved by the cashback. I bought some to sell, if it is taken. The Irish farm was not.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Apr 4, 2014 16:13:39 GMT
This one was (bit our hand off, as they say). Good luck with selling it - I hope the pile wasn't too high!
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Post by aloanatlast on Apr 5, 2014 2:16:48 GMT
All they have to do is apply their "3 bid per minute" rule for the (unreleased) open API across all site users, or at least those making more than one bid per second. That's just designing it to be even more useless than it already is. It's farcical to have an auction and then cripple it to lock out the bidders and stop them bidding. A 3 bids a minute speed limit creates this scenario - flipper has 100 x £20 bids in, other bidders knock them all out in a minute or two, then it takes the flipper over half an hour to get back in. In fact it would be impossible to buy a large number of small parts at top or near-top rate, because it would be impossible to keep up with the rate at which bids were being knocked out. But the whole point of the technique is to keep rates as high as possible. The trick is to replace the required amount of other people's money with your own money just before the auction ends, so they don't have time to get back in. Any alternative would drive rates down further and sooner. They've got a strange way of going about it. Before MBRs I was flipping Cs at around 9%.
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jimbo
Posts: 234
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Post by jimbo on Apr 5, 2014 5:35:02 GMT
I've always suspected the purpose of the MBR was to protect the people who were dumb enough to autolend to Band C borrowers at 4% pa from themselves, or at least try to cushion them from the inevitable defaults. I doubt very much if the primary purpose was to raise rates for borrowers.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Apr 5, 2014 14:39:21 GMT
That's just designing it to be even more useless than it already is. It's farcical to have an auction and then cripple it to lock out the bidders and stop them bidding. But the whole point of the technique is to keep rates as high as possible. The trick is to replace the required amount of other people's money with your own money just before the auction ends, so they don't have time to get back in. Any alternative would drive rates down further and sooner. You are not describing an auction, you are describing a 'fastest finger first' arcade game, or musical chairs or something, which is basically what we have. The goal of a real auction is to buy things at a rate you are happy with but nobody else wanted to match/beat .. 'not having time to get back in' doesn't happen a lot at real auctions .. the auction runs until nobody wants to bid. Now I agree that is not realistic for FC et al, but a random +/- an hour on the close time, or an 'extend the close until the bid rate drops below X', or something similar might take out the arcade element (and help the server loads in the last few minutes). Of course in a real auction you don't get the seller (in this case the borrowers) suddenly deciding they really want a 'buy it now' price and closing early either. Yes, limiting bid rates, or bid totals (and I'll agree 3 per minute is stupid, but 30 a minute might be OK) disadvantages flippers .. that's the whole point of doing it, give the humans half a chance against the bots. If someone actually wants the loan, I'm sure they'd be happy with 20 or 50 bids at £20 or £100 or whatever .. the bots which buy 100 to 1000 parts at £20 or £40 each obviously have no intention except a fast flip, probably back to the very people they blew out of the auction.
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