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iOS 6.0 Causes CDN Overages

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Re: iOS 6.0 Causes CDN Overages

#51

Post by chrisrhoden »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #45

This just seems to be how they handle audio media. It's not even anything specific to podcasts. My own scanner stuff is just a web page, and it gets hit by this from time to time. Each call is a single file, it's static, and there's nothing funny going on with it. It looks like the playback stuff is jumping around in some attempt to figure out exactly what it is first. It seems like it would be far better if they alw…

Yep, as I mentioned in the article this is the AV Foundation framework - presumably used in all Apple apps since it's the official API they recommend. Doesn't surprise me that the browser would be affected.

The weird thing is that, when we first started doing the tests, it would happen immediately on pressing play. After some period of time running the tests, it started happening later and later in the process, indicating - what? No clue.

Re: iOS 6.0 Causes CDN Overages

#52

Post by chrisrhoden »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #46
untog wrote: post #31

This is where Apple's closed nature is very annoying. Assuming the article is correct, it was bug introduced in 6.0, and fixed in 6.0.1. So Apple knew about it, investigated it and published a fix. Yet they didn't tell anyone about it. Or the crippling effect this bug could have on their data allowances. Why not? Are they really that terrified of admitting to making a mistake?

This same behavior has been happening to me since before iOS 6 came out. I can show the same "206 storm" happening as far back as August of last year with iOS 4.3.5.

The playback stuff definitely makes use of many range requests, but what we found was that they were being used in a way that vaguely made sense in other versions (i.e. downloading a few hundred kb to continue buffering, pausing the download, and picking up again). With 6.0.0, we're seeing actual storms of these requests happening many times per second.

Re: iOS 6.0 Causes CDN Overages

#53

Post by scrumper »

danso wrote: post #22
dageshi wrote: post #9

Is it just me or are apple making more dumb mistakes lately? There's this and that ajax caching issue from a month or two ago. Perhaps I'm just having selective memory?

I dunno, how crummy the App Store has become is a perfect example of this. The App Store is one prominent way they make loads of money and build loyalty to the ecosystem, and yet it is a shitshow on IOS6...the responsiveness is as bad as I've seen on non-iOS software, but for me, the two really inexplicable failures are: 1. the use of modals to show individual apps on the iPad. So if you get to an app page and accide…

Your Sony: is it an NEX-7? There's a firmware update just out which fixes the video button problem: http://blog.sony.com/alphafirmwareupdates

Re: iOS 6.0 Causes CDN Overages

#54

Post by erickhill »

I believe this is directly related to phone data usage overages as well. Having used an iPhone 4 on ATT for 2 years, I could almost guess my data usage perfectly each month.

By the 2nd day of using my new Verizon iP5, I was receiving warning texts from Verizon that I was about to exceed my data limits.

Thinking it was me, I increased my plan. That only stopped the bleeding for another few days.

Oh, and I installed the "fix" that was sent out to supposedly repair the known issue. (I was always on Wi-Fi networks but still being charged for data.)

I recently called Verizon to dispute the data. They quickly erased all of my data overages. Snap, like that. The man I spoke with called a technician on my behalf.

The people who can erase overages do not officially have this issue in their database as something to be aware of. But the technician he spoke with said there was absolutely a problem, and both Verizon and Apple knew about it and were working on it.

Then, I was given a "diamond ticket" to absolve me of any future overages until a fix is found.

Re: iOS 6.0 Causes CDN Overages

#55

Post by addlepate »

robomartin wrote: post #35

I have never considered Apple to be a solid software company. They are a marketing company in the tech sector. If they made washing machines they'd be sexy as hell. In my years of exposure to Apple tech I have always been in awe of their industrial design, mechanical design and manufacturing prowess. Their software, however, often leaves much to be desired. I say this both as a developer and a user. From OSX to iOS t…

OK. I bet you use a WebKit browser.

Re: iOS 6.0 Causes CDN Overages

#56

Post by malyk »

riobard wrote: post #26

Hmm, so this explained my 3G data overage last month. I have 6GB/month of data, and usually I'd be using around only 700MB. But last month my iPhone 4S (running iOS 6.0) consumed nearly 8GB in total, resulted in quite some overage fee. Should I ask Apple for a refund for this? :|

Last month I moved and didn't have an ISP at home for the first 3 weeks or so. I set up tethering on my phone and a 5GB data plan. Yesterday I got a notice that I was over my data limit. I haven't done a whole lot of web surfing in the new house, but I have listened to a ton of podcasts using the Podcast app which I have never done before.

So if I just blew through 5 GB of data in 2ish weeks and the only thing different was using the podcasts app...

(I did watch 3 episodes of walking dead on Netflix which obviously contributed to the data use, but a 45 minute episode can't be that big)

Re: iOS 6.0 Causes CDN Overages

#57

Post by zizee »

robomartin wrote: post #35

I have never considered Apple to be a solid software company. They are a marketing company in the tech sector. If they made washing machines they'd be sexy as hell. In my years of exposure to Apple tech I have always been in awe of their industrial design, mechanical design and manufacturing prowess. Their software, however, often leaves much to be desired. I say this both as a developer and a user. From OSX to iOS t…

addlepate wrote 37 minutes ago | link [dead]

OK. I bet you use a WebKit browser.

addlepate: you were hell-banned 100 days ago (unfairly in my mind).

Re: iOS 6.0 Causes CDN Overages

#58

Post by michael_miller »

untog wrote: post #31

This is where Apple's closed nature is very annoying. Assuming the article is correct, it was bug introduced in 6.0, and fixed in 6.0.1. So Apple knew about it, investigated it and published a fix. Yet they didn't tell anyone about it. Or the crippling effect this bug could have on their data allowances. Why not? Are they really that terrified of admitting to making a mistake?

To play devil's advocate, why would it matter? Is there any fix app developers could implement, short of blocking requests from iOS 6 users?

Re: iOS 6.0 Causes CDN Overages

#59

Post by andrewcastmate »

I don't have anything wildly new to add, but I'm part of a podcast hosting site (http://Castmate.fm) and we've seen this bigtime, it's crazy.

We host some high-traffic podcasts with a huge range of listeners, and I've gone through the logs and regularily see stuff like NUMEROUS listeners making 4000+ http requests in 30 minutes, all the 206 calls everyone here is reporting, it's just nuts, so bizarre.

I feel terrible for all the people getting hit with overages, it's so gross. I did some gorilla math the other day and feel pretty confident that this has boosted our network usage by ~25%, I should have narrowed it down to just the affected iOS 6.0 devices, must be astronomical.

Re: iOS 6.0 Causes CDN Overages

#60

Post by donavanm »

noinput wrote: post #17

Same here, noticed a huge spike in bandwidth for my startup's shows hosted on CloudFront. 206 responses are flooding my logs and I moved everything off of CloudFront for my users to triage the cost. This breakdown explains it all: http://cl.ly/image/2H3u3u2O333g Talk about a pain, not to mention the 10x bill from Amazon that came as a surprise.

"I moved everything off of CloudFront for my users to triage the cost."

Can you explain more? Was there some cloudfront behavior exacerbating the issue? AFAIK this is just a client (mis)using range requests and CloudFront replying as requested.

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